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The Past, Present, and Future of Human Migration

Thursday, June 29, 2017

By Abigail Meisel Illustrations by Chris Gash

Displacement. Poverty. Persecution. Economic opportunity. These are some of the many reasons that people migrate to countries thousands of miles from their ancestral homelands. In modern history, major demographic transitions have included the influx of immigrants to the U.S. from the mid-1800s to the early 20th century; the flow of humanity at the end of World War II, when tens of millions of people, particularly in Europe, were sundered from their native countries by years of violent conflict; and the movement of more than 17 million Africans within their continent in the 21st century. Today, more than 200 million people—most from Latin America, South Asia, and Africa—are migrants both within and across continents.

“Migration is now a big part of the global economy and of global society,” says Hans-Peter Kohler, Frederick J. Warren Professor of Demography and a Research Associate in the Population Studies Center.

Although migration is a complex story, many Americans and Europeans see it in simplistic terms, according to Tukufu Zuberi, Lasry Family Professor of Race Relations and Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies: There are “natives,” who belong, and “foreigners,” who do not. New cultures, languages, and economic demands of immigrants have roiled Western societies in the past decade, making migration a new locus of international concern. 

To better understand the mass movement of populations across the globe, Penn social science faculty are interpreting data, analyzing the effect of immigration on sending and receiving countries, and untangling the many complexities of immigration today. Their work offers new perspectives on how mass migration shapes our world.

Unwelcoming Neighbors

When Zuberi studied the response of largely white Washington, D.C. neighborhoods to an influx of migrants, the results surprised him. 

“When there is more diversity, whites are less tolerant of those of other races,” Zuberi said. “We used to think exactly the opposite. It made sense that the more diverse a city was, the less segregated it would be. That turns out not to be true.”  

Zuberi, a demographer whose primary interest is in the African diaspora, published his findings in  Sociology of Race and Ethnicity  in 2015. 

Putting the rise of segregation in D.C. into global context, Zuberi looks at larger social changes afoot in the U.S. and in Western Europe.

On a worldwide level, he explains, dramatic immigration shifts are going to create radical changes in the identity of populations. The influx of nonwhite groups into the U.S. and Europe—particularly the U.S., France, the U.K., and Germany—has whites there “singing an anti-immigrant note.” 

“Whites have regarded themselves as a nation’s ‘first-class’ citizens, but immigration is increasingly challenging this view as nonwhite communities continue to grow,” Zuberi says.  

Demographic studies show that the U.S. will become a “minority majority” population in the 21st century, meaning that nonwhites will comprise the majority of the U.S. population.

According to Zuberi, this is just the latest chapter in a long, and often violent, history of demographic shifts on the North American continent.

“White Europeans displaced the indigenous peoples here and also brought in a large group of enslaved individuals. And now whites are being displaced,” he said. 

He sees the recent presidential election as “the reaction of white people to their own demographic demise,” and added, “Race is  the  problem in America and in the Western world now.”

Melding into Society

Michael Jones-Correa, Professor of Political Science, examines the opinions, behavior and policy preferences of Latino immigrants to the U.S. He served as co-principal investigator of the 2006 Latino National Survey, a national state-stratified survey of Latinos in the U.S.

Jones-Correa sees our era as the “end of consensus, both in the U.S. and Europe, that immigration is necessarily a good thing.” Immigration, he feels, was a central value to Western society, and it was a given that letting immigrants in was beneficial for the society and the economy—and that it enabled displaced families to reunify and rebuild their lives.

“I think all those principles are, at the very least, being questioned,” Jones-Correa says. He adds that in the U.S. and Europe, “[we] are seeing the rise of these openly anti-immigrant parties that are willing to pay fairly high costs—in the case of the U.K., actually pulling back out of the EU—in order to, as they would put it, regain control of their borders.”

More recently, he has been looking at “immigrants in the suburbs, specifically how suburban native-born Americans respond to immigration,” he says, and at relations among immigrants and the U.S.-born in Philadelphia and Atlanta.

Looking at individual communities can give a bigger picture of the relationships among white and African Americans and migrant groups. A lack of contact among individuals in neighborhoods and workplaces, for example, can lower U.S.-born residents’ tolerance for migrants and lead to support for policies like those hardening the border, restricting immigration into the U.S.

Yet, most Americans do not realize that there has been a net-zero flow of undocumented migration across the U.S. border from Mexico since 2008. And half of all those who are in the U.S. illegally are here because of visa overstays, not because they cross the border without papers. 

 “A lot of what building a physical wall would do is already accomplished,” says Jones-Correa. He adds that much of the border is already heavily fenced, except in the desert and mountains. This is where people cross over—and where the building of a wall would be, architecturally, a near impossibility. 

“Addressing the situation of undocumented workers in ways other than deportation is a policy imperative not just for the undocumented workers themselves, but also for the United States, and the workers’ receiving communities.”

"Crimmigation"

The path to deportation can begin with a minor legal infraction. This is because Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) relies on criminal justice agencies, such police and sheriff’s departments, to identify immigrants for deportation, no matter how minor the crime.

“Mundane violations, such as fishing without a license, running a stop sign while riding a bike, and driving with a broken taillight, have all resulted in undocumented immigrants’ arrest by local police and subsequent removal by federal authorities,” says Amada Armenta, Assistant Professor of Sociology.

In her forthcoming book,  Protect, Serve, and Deport: The Rise of Policing as Immigration Enforcement , Armenta analyzes how local police are pivotal actors in the immigration enforcement system although they do not technically enforce immigration laws.

“We call this the ‘crimmigration system’ because it’s a blurring of the line between law enforcement and immigration enforcement,” Armenta says.

In her book, she focuses on the immigrant community in Nashville, Tennessee’s Davidson County. Between 2007 and 2012, the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office participated in an experimental immigration enforcement program called 287(g), which empowered the agency to enforce immigration laws. The sheriff’s employees became de facto immigration officers, screening arrestees for immigration violations. The result? Over 10,000 immigrants were identified for deportation by local authorities. The U.S. government scaled back the program in 2012 because it was deemed ineffective in identifying dangerous criminals for deportation.

“President Trump wants this program not only reinstated but expanded,” Armenta says. 

The problem, in her view, is that the broadening of police powers to include deportation erodes the trust between police and the community they serve.

“I study how Latino immigrants perceive safety, and if they feel comfortable reporting crimes of victimization,” she says. “It’s important for the community to feel that they trust the police and vice versa.” 

The Other One Percent

The image of the immigrant as a poor person from Mexico who lacks education stands in direct contrast to the reality of the second-largest group of immigrants to the U.S.: Asian Indians. The most educated and highest-income immigrants to the U.S., they began entering the country in number following the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act (also known as the Hart-Celler Act).

“Seventy percent of Indian immigrants to the U.S. have professional degrees, in comparison to 20 percent of the American population,” says Devesh Kapur, Professor of Political Science, who is the Madan Lal Sobti Professor for the Study of Contemporary India and serves as Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of India.

In his new book,  The Other One Percent: Indians in America , he examines the migratory journey of Indian immigrants as well as Americans of Indian descent. The book, co-authored with two of Kapur’s colleagues in the field, has been reviewed in such prestigious periodicals as  The Economist  and  The Financial Times . 

“If the U.S. is going to put a cap on migration into the country, what is the optimal mix of legal immigrants in terms of public policy? Those who are young and skilled and ‘fiscally attractive’? Those who are fleeing persecution and come in seeking asylum or as refugees fleeing wars and conflict? Those who are coming in as family reunification or family sponsorship?” Kapur asks. “These are contentious choices and pose difficult trade-offs—and those won’t be easy conversations,” he says.

A Bimodal Trend

Emilio Parrado, Dorothy Swaine Thomas Professor of Sociology, describes immigration to the U.S. as a “bimodal history.” Immigration was high at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries, declined during the interwar period, and increased again in recent decades. The bimodal trend presents two different images of the U.S. 

Chair of the Department of Sociology, Parrado does research focusing on migration, both within and across countries, as a significant life-course event with diverse implications for the migrants themselves, for their families, and for the sending and receiving areas and countries. 

“What is it that we look at when we evaluate immigration today?” he asks. “Is it really high, out of control immigration, or is it just back to a more normal level after a decline that ended primarily in the 1980s?” He added, “If we were so successful at incorporating immigrants before, why is Mexican immigration perceived as a burgeoning threat?”

There are two critical issues to consider when discussing immigration from Latin America to the U.S., he explains. The first is the flow of immigrants, the number of people coming in and out of the U.S.; the second is what is called the immigrant “stock,” the foreign-born population residing in the U.S. 

We make a “rigid distinction between immigrants and Americans, and between immigrants and U.S. residents, and that distinction is not as clear as one might think,” Parrado explains. 

For example, what is the rightful status of children brought into the U.S. as infants, the “DREAMers,” children who have little connection with Mexico as their homeland? The only difference that separates them from U.S. citizens is place of birth, Parrado says. Moreover, as a group they have been very successful at completing high school, attending college, and securing employment.

Deporting them would be not only a terrible outcome for the immigrants themselves, but also a loss of significant human capital for the U.S., Parrado argues. 

But the problem is not only for DREAMers. “Addressing the situation of undocumented workers in ways other than deportation is a policy imperative not just for the undocumented workers themselves, but also for the U.S. and the workers’ receiving communities,” he says.

Parrado claims that the revitalization of local areas and cities depends on a dynamic immigrant population. He calls it “disheartening” to see what is happening to the children of immigrants in the U.S. when they and their families are threatened with deportation. He points out that many of those being forced out of the country are the spouses, parents, and children of U.S. citizens.

“Do we really want to tear apart the families of U.S. citizens because we don’t want to regularize the situation of foreign-born workers?” he asks.

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How U.S. immigration laws and rules have changed through history

The United States began regulating immigration soon after it won independence from Great Britain, and the laws since enacted have reflected the politics and migrant flows of the times. Early legislation tended to impose limits that favored Europeans, but a sweeping 1965 law opened doors to immigrants from other parts of the world. In more recent years, laws and presidential actions have been shaped by concerns about refugees, unauthorized immigration and terrorism.

A 1790 law was the first to specify who could become a citizen, limiting that privilege to free whites of “good moral character” who had lived in the U.S. for at least two years. In 1870, the right of citizenship was extended to those of African origin.

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Starting in 1875, a series of restrictions on immigration were enacted. They included bans on criminals, people with contagious diseases, polygamists, anarchists, beggars and importers of prostitutes. Other restrictions targeted the rising number of Asian immigrants, first limiting migration from China and later banning immigration from most Asian countries.

By the early 1900s, the nation’s predominant immigration flow shifted away from northern and western European nations and toward southern and eastern Europe. In response, laws were passed in 1921 and 1924 to try to restore earlier immigration patterns by capping total annual immigration and imposing numerical quotas based on immigrant nationality that favored northern and western European countries.

Long-standing immigration restrictions began to crumble in 1943, when a law allowed a limited number of Chinese to immigrate. In 1952, legislation allowed a limited number of visas for other Asians, and race was formally removed as grounds for exclusion. Although a presidential commission recommended scrapping the national-origins quota system, Congress did not go along.

In 1965, though, a combination of political, social and geopolitical factors led to passage of the landmark Immigration and Nationality Act that created a new system favoring family reunification and skilled immigrants, rather than country quotas. The law also imposed the first limits on immigration from the Western Hemisphere. Before then, Latin Americans had been allowed to enter the U.S. without many restrictions. Since enactment of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, immigration has been dominated by people born in Asia and Latin America, rather than Europe.

Several laws since then have focused on refugees, paving the way for entrance of Indochinese refugees fleeing war violence in the 1970s and later including relief for other nationalities, including Chinese, Nicaraguans and Haitians. A 1990 law created the “temporary protective status” that has shielded immigrants, mainly Central Americans, from deportation to countries facing natural disasters, armed conflicts or other extraordinary conditions.

In 1986, Congress enacted another major law – the Immigration Reform and Control Act – that granted legalization to millions of unauthorized immigrants, mainly from Latin America, who met certain conditions. The law also imposed sanctions on employers who hired unauthorized immigrants. Subsequent laws in 1996, 2002 and 2006 were responses to concerns about terrorism and unauthorized immigration. These measures emphasized border control, prioritized enforcement of laws on hiring immigrants and tightened admissions eligibility.

The most recent changes in immigration policy have been an exception to that pattern. In 2012, President Obama took executive action to allow young adults who had been brought to the country illegally to apply for deportation relief and a work permit. In 2014, he expanded that program (known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA) and set up a new program to offer similar benefits to some unauthorized-immigrant parents of U.S.-born children. The DACA expansion and the new program (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, or DAPA) are on hold because of a legal challenge by 26 states.

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Migrating to the United States: Then and Now Essay

During the turn of the eighteenth century, the United States was arguably the best place to migrate to in the whole world. Therefore, people came from all corners of the world with the intention of settling and seeking a new life in the United States. The immigrants who came into the United States at the turn of the century mostly settled in the major cities where it was easier to obtain work. Even though a century has passed since Ellis and Angels Islands, immigration into the United States bears striking similarities to that of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Today, immigration into the United States is still considered to be a prestigious and fruitful venture by the immigrants. In addition, the government is still grappling with issues and policies concerning immigration. This paper will act as a comparison between my own migration experience and that of immigrants at Ellis and Angel Islands at the turn of the twentieth century.

By the end of the 1800s, migration into the United States had begun to encompass people of diverse cultures. Previously, only individuals from western and northern Europe were migrating to the United States (Foner 355). My migration journey started from the United Arab Emirates, an area that does not consist of ‘traditional’ immigrants to the United States. Consequently, I would have a lot in common with the immigrants at Angel Island in the 1900s. For instance, like the Asian immigrants at Angel Island, my cultural background has little in common with that of America. However, my knowledge of English during my migration was particularly better than that of most Asian immigrants at Angel Island. On the other hand, the European immigrants at Ellis Island had just enough knowledge of the English language to help them communicate with other people in America. The availability of several technological tools and platforms has enabled me to master the English language at a faster rate than the twentieth-century immigrants.

The immigrants who came to America during the turn of the twentieth century considered the country as ‘the golden gate of opportunities’ (Foner 355). Most of these new immigrants left their countries of origin to escape economic and lifestyle hardships. My main reason for migrating to the United States was to acquire a better level of education. Globalization has harmonized the economic prospects of most countries in Asia and Europe. Therefore, education is the number one motivation for immigrants. It is important to note that there were immigrants who remained in the United States for only a short while. This group is known as ‘birds of passage,’ and it contains immigrants whose circumstances are similar to mine. After a short while, I intend to return to my country of origin and apply what I have studied in America.

Most immigrants came to America using steamships. Immigration details were processed in America, particularly in the ports of Ellis, Angel, and Charleston. Traveling to the United States in these early times took between one and four weeks. In some cases, immigrants were questioned intensely while awaiting admission into the United States. My migration experience featured a less grueling journey by plane. In addition, the availability of foreign embassies has made it possible for people to seek admission to the United States in their own countries. However, immigration officials still take immigrants through a rigorous grilling process. In my case, this process took more than ten weeks before I was finally granted a visa to enable me to study in the United States.

Works Cited

Foner, Nancy. “What’s new about transnationalism?: New York immigrants today and at the turn of the century.” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 6.3 (1997): 355-375. Print.

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IvyPanda. (2020, June 22). Migrating to the United States: Then and Now. https://ivypanda.com/essays/migrating-to-the-united-states-then-and-now/

"Migrating to the United States: Then and Now." IvyPanda , 22 June 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/migrating-to-the-united-states-then-and-now/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'Migrating to the United States: Then and Now'. 22 June.

IvyPanda . 2020. "Migrating to the United States: Then and Now." June 22, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/migrating-to-the-united-states-then-and-now/.

1. IvyPanda . "Migrating to the United States: Then and Now." June 22, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/migrating-to-the-united-states-then-and-now/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Migrating to the United States: Then and Now." June 22, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/migrating-to-the-united-states-then-and-now/.

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U.S. Immigration Since 1965

By: History.com Editors

Updated: June 7, 2019 | Original: March 5, 2010

The Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, also known as the Hart-Celler Act, abolished an earlier quota system based on national origin and established a new immigration policy based on reuniting immigrant families and attracting skilled labor to the United States. Over the next four decades, the policies put into effect in 1965 would greatly change the demographic makeup of the American population, as immigrants entering the United States under the new legislation came increasingly from countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, as opposed to Europe.

Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965

By the early 1960s, calls to reform U.S. immigration policy had mounted, thanks in no small part to the growing strength of the civil rights movement. At the time, immigration was based on the national-origins quota system in place since the 1920s, under which each nationality was assigned a quota based on its representation in past U.S. census figures. The civil rights movement’s focus on equal treatment regardless of race or nationality led many to view the quota system as backward and discriminatory. In particular, Greeks, Poles, Portuguese and Italians–of whom increasing numbers were seeking to enter the U.S.–claimed that the quota system discriminated against them in favor of Northern Europeans. President John F. Kennedy even took up the immigration reform cause, giving a speech in June 1963 calling the quota system “intolerable.”

Did you know? A report in early 2009 by the DHS's Office of Immigration Statistics estimated the number of "unauthorized immigrants" in the United States at 10.7 million, down from 11.6 million in 2008. The recent decline in immigration coincided with the economic downturn in the U.S., but figures were still up from 2000, when illegal immigrants numbered some 8.5 million.

After Kennedy’s assassination that November, Congress began debating and would eventually pass the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, co-sponsored by Representative Emanuel Celler of New York and Senator Philip Hart of Michigan and heavily supported by the late president’s brother, Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts . During Congressional debates, a number of experts testified that little would effectively change under the reformed legislation, and it was seen more as a matter of principle to have a more open policy. Indeed, on signing the act into law in October 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson stated that the act “is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions….It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives or add importantly to either our wealth or our power.”

Immediate Impact

In reality (and with the benefit of hindsight), the bill signed in 1965 marked a dramatic break with past immigration policy, and would have an immediate and lasting impact. In place of the national-origins quota system, the act provided for preferences to be made according to categories, such as relatives of U.S. citizens or permanent residents, those with skills deemed useful to the United States or refugees of violence or unrest. Though it abolished quotas per se, the system did place caps on per-country and total immigration, as well as caps on each category. As in the past, family reunification was a major goal, and the new immigration policy would increasingly allow entire families to uproot themselves from other countries and reestablish their lives in the U.S.

In the first five years after the bill’s passage, immigration to the U.S. from Asian countries–especially those fleeing war-torn Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Cambodia)–would more than quadruple. (Under past immigration policies, Asian immigrants had been effectively barred from entry.) Other Cold War-era conflicts during the 1960s and 1970s saw millions of people fleeing poverty or the hardships of communist regimes in Cuba, Eastern Europe and elsewhere to seek their fortune on American shores. All told, in the three decades following passage of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, more than 18 million legal immigrants entered the United States, more than three times the number admitted over the preceding 30 years.

By the end of the 20th century, the policies put into effect by the Immigration Act of 1965 had greatly changed the face of the American population. Whereas in the 1950s, more than half of all immigrants were Europeans and just 6 percent were Asians, by the 1990s only 16 percent were Europeans and 31 percent were of Asian descent, while the percentages of Latino and African immigrants had also jumped significantly. Between 1965 and 2000, the highest number of immigrants (4.3 million) to the U.S. came from Mexico , in addition to some 1.4 million from the Philippines. Korea, the Dominican Republic, India, Cuba and Vietnam were also leading sources of immigrants, each sending between 700,000 and 800,000 over this period.

Continuing Source of Debate

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, illegal immigration was a constant source of political debate, as immigrants continue to pour into the United States, mostly by land routes through Canada and Mexico. The Immigration Reform Act in 1986 attempted to address the issue by providing better enforcement of immigration policies and creating more possibilities to seek legal immigration. The act included two amnesty programs for unauthorized aliens, and collectively granted amnesty to more than 3 million illegal aliens. Another piece of immigration legislation, the 1990 Immigration Act, modified and expanded the 1965 act, increasing the total level of immigration to 700,000. The law also provided for the admission of immigrants from “underrepresented” countries to increase the diversity of the immigrant flow.

The economic recession that hit the country in the early 1990s was accompanied by a resurgence of anti-immigrant feeling, including among lower-income Americans competing for jobs with immigrants willing to work for lower wages. In 1996, Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which addressed border enforcement and the use of social programs by immigrants.

Immigration in the 21st Century

In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Homeland Security Act of 2002 created the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which took over many immigration service and enforcement functions formerly performed by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). With some modifications, the policies put into place by the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 are the same ones governing U.S. immigration in the early 21st century. Non-citizens currently enter the United States lawfully in one of two ways, either by receiving either temporary (non-immigrant) admission or permanent (immigrant) admission. A member of the latter category is classified as a lawful permanent resident, and receives a green card granting them eligibility to work in the United States and to eventually apply for citizenship.

There could be perhaps no greater reflection of the impact of immigration than the 2008 election of Barack Obama , the son of a Kenyan father and an American mother (from Kansas ), as the nation’s first African-American president. Eighty-five percent white in 1965, the nation’s population was one-third minority in 2009 and is on track for a nonwhite majority by 2042.

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Immigrants Then and Now

However, most immigrants arriving at Ellis Island were processed within hours and, in fact, no passports, visas, or papers were needed to enter the United States. In the rare case that an immigrant was not processed due to health or questionable information, they were detained. 

“Detention meant you could be held overnight, and you would sleep in dormitory rooms and you would be fed three meals a day in the immigrants’ dining room,” according to Barry Moreno, historian and librarian at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum . Only 2 percent of immigrants at Ellis Island were denied entry to the United States.  

In terms of the advantageousness of modern-day immigrants, new data- actually old data that has finally been digitized and reviewed- also shows this is untrue. 

The First Immigrants Compared to Today's

“In reality, today’s immigrants- and their children- are building the American Dream with every bit as much speed, ingenuity and success as the huddled masses of centuries past,” writes Andrew Van Dam of The Washington Post.

The research that shows this immigrant success comes from Stanford University economist Ran Abramitzky and Leah Boustan of Princeton University. Professors Abramitzky and Boustan took 14 years to follow Americans across generations using old decennial census files released by the government.  

Through the use of online tools like Ancestry.com, volunteers that digitized print records, and hours of analyzing the data, the findings proved that Ellis Island immigrants and today’s air, sea or land immigrants succeed at the same rates.  

“While Ellis Island immigrants were better off upon arrival than today’s immigrants, thanks largely to the prosperity of their source countries, the economic progress they made during their lifetimes was strikingly similar,”  

Thanks to tracing census and genealogy records across generation, Abramitzky and Boustan got a full perspective of early immigrant life. The first wave of arrivals struggled finding work, learning the language, and having stability. However, the second generation assimilated better, rose up the economic ladder, and had more financial stability. Progressively, each generation had a better life.  

“Children of immigrants from Mexico and the Dominican Republic today are just as likely to move up from their parents’ circumstances as were children of poor Swedes and Finns a hundred years ago,” the researchers wrote . 

Immigrants Make the U.S. Better

This research is valuable since it shows the importance of immigrants assimilating and giving back to this country. At OPA we believe in the potential that immigrants have and support their path to becoming full members of American society. Because of that we created our 1% interest loan to pay for USCIS at the moment of citizenship application. It is a hand-up, not a hand-out, that builds trust and accountability amongst community.  

Then and now, immigrants make this country better. Join our community of lenders and help make citizenship a reality for the next eligible immigrant.  

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Eight brilliant student essays on immigration and unjust assumptions.

Read winning essays from our winter 2019 “Border (In)Security” student writing contest.

For the winter 2019 student writing competition, “Border (In)Security,” we invited students to read the YES! Magazine article “Two-Thirds of Americans Live in the “Constitution-Free Zone” by Lornet Turnbull and respond with an up-to-700-word essay. 

Students had a choice between two writing prompts for this contest on immigration policies at the border and in the “Constitution-free zone,” a 100-mile perimeter from land and sea borders where U.S. Border Patrol can search any vehicle, bus, or vessel without a warrant. They could state their positions on the impact of immigration policies on our country’s security and how we determine who is welcome to live here. Or they could write about a time when someone made an unfair assumption about them, just as Border Patrol agents have made warrantless searches of Greyhound passengers based simply on race and clothing.

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From the hundreds of essays written, these eight were chosen as winners. Be sure to read the author’s response to the essay winners and the literary gems that caught our eye.

Middle School Winner: Alessandra Serafini

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University Winner: Daniel Fries

Powerful Voice Winner: Emma Hernandez-Sanchez

Powerful Voice Winner: Tiara Lewis

Powerful Voice Winner: Hailee Park

Powerful Voice Winner: Aminata Toure

From the Author Lornet Turnbull

Literary Gems

Middle school winner.

Alessandra Serafini

Brier Terrace Middle School, Brier, Wash.

Broken Promises

“…Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

These words were written by Emma Lazarus and are inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty. And yet, the very door they talk about is no longer available to those who need it the most. The door has been shut, chained, and guarded. It no longer shines like gold. Those seeking asylum are being turned away. Families are being split up; children are being stranded. The promise America made to those in need is broken.

Not only is the promise to asylum seekers broken, but the promises made to some 200 million people already residing within the U.S. are broken, too. Anyone within 100 miles of the United States border lives in the “Constitution-free zone” and can be searched with “reasonable suspicion,” a suspicion that is determined by Border Patrol officers. The zone encompasses major cities, such as Seattle and New York City, and it even covers entire states, such as Florida, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. I live in the Seattle area, and it is unsettling that I can be searched and interrogated without the usual warrant. In these areas, there has been an abuse of power; people have been unlawfully searched and interrogated because of assumed race or religion.

The ACLU obtained data from the Customs and Border Protection Agency that demonstrate this reprehensible profiling. The data found that “82 percent of foreign citizens stopped by agents in that state are Latino, and almost 1 in 3 of those processed are, in fact, U.S. citizens.” These warrantless searches impede the trust-building process and communication between the local population and law enforcement officers. Unfortunately, this lack of trust makes campaigns, such as Homeland Security’s “If You See Something, Say Something,” ineffective due to the actions of the department’s own members and officers. Worst of all, profiling ostracizes entire communities and makes them feel unsafe in their own country.

Ironically, asylum seekers come to America in search of safety. However, the thin veil of safety has been drawn back, and, behind it, our tarnished colors are visible. We need to welcome people in their darkest hours rather than destroy their last bit of hope by slamming the door in their faces. The immigration process is currently in shambles, and an effective process is essential for both those already in the country and those outside of it. Many asylum seekers are running from war, poverty, hunger, and death. Their countries’ instability has hijacked every aspect of their lives, made them vagabonds, and the possibility of death, a cruel and unforgiving death, is real. They see no future for their children, and they are desperate for the perceived promise of America—a promise of opportunity, freedom, and a safe future. An effective process would determine who actually needs help and then grant them passage into America. Why should everyone be turned away? My grandmother immigrated to America from Scotland in 1955. I exist because she had a chance that others are now being denied.

Emma Lazarus named Lady Liberty the “Mother of Exiles.” Why are we denying her the happiness of children? Because we cannot decide which ones? America has an inexplicable area where our constitution has been spurned and forgotten. Additionally, there is a rancorous movement to close our southern border because of a deep-rooted fear of immigrants and what they represent. For too many Americans, they represent the end of established power and white supremacy, which is their worst nightmare. In fact, immigrants do represent change—healthy change—with new ideas and new energy that will help make this country stronger. Governmental agreement on a humane security plan is critical to ensure that America reaches its full potential. We can help. We can help people in unimaginably terrifying situations, and that should be our America.

Alessandra Serafini plays on a national soccer team for Seattle United and is learning American Sign Language outside of school. Her goal is to spread awareness about issues such as climate change, poverty, and large-scale political conflict through writing and public speaking.

  High School Winner

Cain Trevino

North Side High School, Fort Worth, Texas

Xenophobia and the Constitution-Free Zone

In August of 2017, U.S. Border Patrol agents boarded a Greyhound bus that had just arrived at the White River Junction station from Boston. According to Danielle Bonadona, a Lebanon resident and a bus passenger, “They wouldn’t let us get off. They boarded the bus and told us they needed to see our IDs or papers.” Bonadona, a 29-year-old American citizen, said that the agents spent around 20 minutes on the bus and “only checked the IDs of people who had accents or were not white.” Bonadona said she was aware of the 100-mile rule, but the experience of being stopped and searched felt “pretty unconstitutional.”

In the YES! article “Two-Thirds of Americans Live in the ‘Constitution-Free Zone’” by Lornet Turnbull, the author references the ACLU’s argument that “the 100-mile zone violates Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.” However, the Supreme Court upholds the use of immigration checkpoints for inquiries on citizenship status. In my view, the ACLU makes a reasonable argument. The laws of the 100-mile zone are blurred, and, too often, officials give arbitrary reasons to conduct a search. Xenophobia and fear of immigrants burgeons in cities within these areas. People of color and those with accents or who are non-English speakers are profiled by law enforcement agencies that enforce anti-immigrant policies. The “Constitution-free zone” is portrayed as an effective barrier to secure our borders. However, this anti-immigrant zone does not make our country any safer. In fact, it does the opposite.

As a former student from the Houston area, I can tell you that the Constitution-free zone makes immigrants and citizens alike feel on edge. The Department of Homeland Security’s white SUVs patrol our streets. Even students feel the weight of anti-immigrant laws. Dennis Rivera Sarmiento, an undocumented student who attended Austin High School in Houston, was held by school police in February 2018 for a minor altercation and was handed over to county police. He was later picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and held in a detention center. It is unfair that kids like Dennis face much harsher consequences for minor incidents than other students with citizenship.

These instances are a direct result of anti-immigrant laws. For example, the 287(g) program gives local and state police the authority to share individuals’ information with ICE after an arrest. This means that immigrants can be deported for committing misdemeanors as minor as running a red light. Other laws like Senate Bill 4, passed by the Texas Legislature, allow police to ask people about their immigration status after they are detained. These policies make immigrants and people of color feel like they’re always under surveillance and that, at any moment, they may be pulled over to be questioned and detained.

During Hurricane Harvey, the immigrant community was hesitant to go to the shelters because images of immigration authorities patrolling the area began to surface online. It made them feel like their own city was against them at a time when they needed them most. Constitution-free zones create communities of fear. For many immigrants, the danger of being questioned about immigration status prevents them from reporting crimes, even when they are the victim. Unreported crime only places more groups of people at risk and, overall, makes communities less safe.

In order to create a humane immigration process, citizens and non-citizens must hold policymakers accountable and get rid of discriminatory laws like 287(g) and Senate Bill 4. Abolishing the Constitution-free zone will also require pressure from the public and many organizations. For a more streamlined legal process, the League of United Latin American Citizens suggests background checks and a small application fee for incoming immigrants, as well as permanent resident status for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) recipients. Other organizations propose expanding the green card lottery and asylum for immigrants escaping the dangers of their home countries.

Immigrants who come to the U.S. are only looking for an opportunity to provide for their families and themselves; so, the question of deciding who gets inside the border and who doesn’t is the same as trying to prove some people are worth more than others. The narratives created by anti-immigrant media plant the false idea that immigrants bring nothing but crime and terrorism. Increased funding for the border and enforcing laws like 287(g) empower anti-immigrant groups to vilify immigrants and promote a witch hunt that targets innocent people. This hatred and xenophobia allow law enforcement to ask any person of color or non-native English speaker about their citizenship or to detain a teenager for a minor incident. Getting rid of the 100-mile zone means standing up for justice and freedom because nobody, regardless of citizenship, should have to live under laws created from fear and hatred.

Cain Trevino is a sophomore. Cain is proud of his Mexican and Salvadorian descent and is an advocate for the implementation of Ethnic Studies in Texas. He enjoys basketball, playing the violin, and studying c omputer science. Cain plans to pursue a career in engineering at Stanford University and later earn a PhD.  

High School Winner

Ethan Peter

Kirkwood High School, Kirkwood, Mo.

I’m an expert on bussing. For the past couple of months, I’ve been a busser at a pizza restaurant near my house. It may not be the most glamorous job, but it pays all right, and, I’ll admit, I’m in it for the money.

I arrive at 5 p.m. and inspect the restaurant to ensure it is in pristine condition for the 6 p.m. wave of guests. As customers come and go, I pick up their dirty dishes, wash off their tables, and reset them for the next guests. For the first hour of my shift, the work is fairly straightforward.

I met another expert on bussing while crossing the border in a church van two years ago. Our van arrived at the border checkpoint, and an agent stopped us. She read our passports, let us through, and moved on to her next vehicle. The Border Patrol agent’s job seemed fairly straightforward.

At the restaurant, 6 p.m. means a rush of customers. It’s the end of the workday, and these folks are hungry for our pizzas and salads. My job is no longer straightforward.

Throughout the frenzy, the TVs in the restaurant buzz about waves of people coming to the U.S. border. The peaceful ebb and flow enjoyed by Border agents is disrupted by intense surges of immigrants who seek to enter the U.S. Outside forces push immigrants to the United States: wars break out in the Middle East, gangs terrorize parts of Central and South America, and economic downturns force foreigners to look to the U.S., drawn by the promise of opportunity. Refugees and migrant caravans arrive, and suddenly, a Border Patrol agent’s job is no longer straightforward.

I turn from the TVs in anticipation of a crisis exploding inside the restaurant: crowds that arrive together will leave together. I’ve learned that when a table looks finished with their dishes, I need to proactively ask to take those dishes, otherwise, I will fall behind, and the tables won’t be ready for the next customers. The challenge is judging who is finished eating. I’m forced to read clues and use my discretion.

Interpreting clues is part of a Border Patrol agent’s job, too. Lornet Turnbull states, “For example, CBP data obtained by ACLU in Michigan shows that 82 percent of foreign citizens stopped by agents in that state are Latino, and almost 1 in 3 of those processed is, in fact, a U.S. citizen.” While I try to spot customers done with their meals so I can clear their part of the table, the Border Patrol officer uses clues to detect undocumented immigrants. We both sometimes guess incorrectly, but our intentions are to do our jobs to the best of our abilities.

These situations are uncomfortable. I certainly do not enjoy interrupting a conversation to get someone’s dishes, and I doubt Border Patrol agents enjoy interrogating someone about their immigration status. In both situations, the people we mistakenly ask lose time and are subjected to awkward and uncomfortable situations. However, here’s where the busser and the Border Patrol officer’s situations are different: If I make a mistake, the customer faces a minor inconvenience. The stakes for a Border Patrol agent are much higher. Mistakenly asking for documentation and searching someone can lead to embarrassment or fear—it can even be life-changing. Thus, Border Patrol agents must be fairly certain that someone’s immigration status is questionable before they begin their interrogation.

To avoid these situations altogether, the U.S. must make the path to citizenship for immigrants easier. This is particularly true for immigrants fleeing violence. Many people object to this by saying these immigrants will bring violence with them, but data does not support this view. In 1939, a ship of Jewish refugees from Germany was turned away from the U.S.—a decision viewed negatively through the lens of history. Today, many people advocate restricting immigration for refugees from violent countries; they refuse to learn the lessons from 1939. The sad thing is that many of these immigrants are seen as just as violent as the people they are fleeing. We should not confuse the oppressed with the oppressor.

My restaurant appreciates customers because they bring us money, just as we should appreciate immigrants because they bring us unique perspectives. Equally important, immigrants provide this country with a variety of expert ideas and cultures, which builds better human connections and strengthens our society.

Ethan Peter is a junior. Ethan writes for his school newspaper, The Kirkwood Call, and plays volleyball for his high school and a club team. He hopes to continue to grow as a writer in the future. 

University Winner

Daniel Fries

Lane Community College, Eugene, Ore.

Detained on the Road to Equality

The United States is a nation of immigrants. There are currently 43 million foreign-born people living in the U.S. Millions of them are naturalized American citizens, and 23 million, or 7.2 percent of the population, are living here without documentation (US Census, 2016). One in seven residents of the United States was not born here. Multiculturalism is, and always has been, a key part of the American experience. However, romantic notions of finding a better life in the United States for immigrants and refugees don’t reflect reality. In modern history, America is a country that systematically treats immigrants—documented or not—and non-white Americans in a way that is fundamentally different than what is considered right by the majority.

The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment states,“No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” When a suspected undocumented immigrant is detained, their basic human rights are violated. Warrantless raids on Greyhound buses within 100 miles of the border (an area referred to by some as the “Constitution-free zone”) are clear violations of human rights. These violations are not due to the current state of politics; they are the symptom of blatant racism in the United States and a system that denigrates and abuses people least able to defend themselves.

It is not surprising that some of the mechanisms that drive modern American racism are political in nature. Human beings are predisposed to dislike and distrust individuals that do not conform to the norms of their social group (Mountz, Allison). Some politicians appeal to this suspicion and wrongly attribute high crime rates to non-white immigrants. The truth is that immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans. In fact, people born in the United States are convicted of crimes at a rate twice that of undocumented non-natives (Cato Institute, 2018).

The majority of immigrants take high risks to seek a better life, giving them incentive to obey the laws of their new country. In many states, any contact with law enforcement may ultimately result in deportation and separation from family. While immigrants commit far fewer crimes, fear of violent crime by much of the U.S. population outweighs the truth. For some politicians, it is easier to sell a border wall to a scared population than it is to explain the need for reformed immigration policy. It’s easier to say that immigrants are taking people’s jobs than explain a changing global economy and its effect on employment. The only crime committed in this instance is discrimination.

Human rights are violated when an undocumented immigrant—or someone perceived as an undocumented immigrant—who has not committed a crime is detained on a Greyhound bus. When a United States citizen is detained on the same bus, constitutional rights are being violated. The fact that this happens every day and that we debate its morality makes it abundantly clear that racism is deeply ingrained in this country. Many Americans who have never experienced this type of oppression lack the capacity to understand its lasting effect. Most Americans don’t know what it’s like to be late to work because they were wrongfully detained, were pulled over by the police for the third time that month for no legal reason, or had to coordinate legal representation for their U.S. citizen grandmother because she was taken off a bus for being a suspected undocumented immigrant. This oppression is cruel and unnecessary.

America doesn’t need a wall to keep out undocumented immigrants; it needs to seriously address how to deal with immigration. It is possible to reform the current system in such a way that anyone can become a member of American society, instead of existing outside of it. If a person wants to live in the United States and agrees to follow its laws and pay its taxes, a path to citizenship should be available.

People come to the U.S. from all over the world for many reasons. Some have no other choice. There are ongoing humanitarian crises in Syria, Yemen, and South America that are responsible for the influx of immigrants and asylum seekers at our borders. If the United States wants to address the current situation, it must acknowledge the global factors affecting the immigrants at the center of this debate and make fact-informed decisions. There is a way to maintain the security of America while treating migrants and refugees compassionately, to let those who wish to contribute to our society do so, and to offer a hand up instead of building a wall.

Daniel Fries studies computer science. Daniel has served as a wildland firefighter in Oregon, California, and Alaska. He is passionate about science, nature, and the ways that technology contributes to making the world a better, more empathetic, and safer place.

Powerful Voice Winner

Emma Hernandez-Sanchez

Wellness, Business and Sports School, Woodburn, Ore.

An Emotion an Immigrant Knows Too Well

Before Donald Trump’s campaign, I was oblivious to my race and the idea of racism. As far as I knew, I was the same as everyone else. I didn’t stop to think about our different-colored skins. I lived in a house with a family and attended school five days a week just like everyone else. So, what made me different?

Seventh grade was a very stressful year—the year that race and racism made an appearance in my life. It was as if a cold splash of water woke me up and finally opened my eyes to what the world was saying. It was this year that Donald Trump started initiating change about who got the right to live in this country and who didn’t. There was a lot of talk about deportation, specifically for Mexicans, and it sparked commotion and fear in me.

I remember being afraid and nervous to go out. At home, the anxiety was there but always at the far back of my mind because I felt safe inside. My fear began as a small whisper, but every time I stepped out of my house, it got louder. I would have dreams about the deportation police coming to my school; when I went to places like the library, the park, the store, or the mall, I would pay attention to everyone and to my surroundings. In my head, I would always ask myself, “Did they give us nasty looks?,” “Why does it seem quieter?” “Was that a cop I just saw?” I would notice little things, like how there were only a few Mexicans out or how empty a store was. When my mom went grocery shopping, I would pray that she would be safe. I was born in America, and both my parents were legally documented. My mom was basically raised here. Still, I couldn’t help but feel nervous.

I knew I shouldn’t have been afraid, but with one look, agents could have automatically thought my family and I were undocumented. Even when the deportation police would figure out that we weren’t undocumented, they’d still figure out a way to deport us—at least that was what was going through my head. It got so bad that I didn’t even want to do the simplest things like go grocery shopping because there was a rumor that the week before a person was taken from Walmart.

I felt scared and nervous, and I wasn’t even undocumented. I can’t even imagine how people who are undocumented must have felt, how they feel. All I can think is that it’s probably ten times worse than what I was feeling. Always worrying about being deported and separated from your family must be hard. I was living in fear, and I didn’t even have it that bad. My heart goes out to families that get separated from each other. It’s because of those fears that I detest the “Constitution-free zone.”

Legally documented and undocumented people who live in the Constitution-free zone are in constant fear of being deported. People shouldn’t have to live this way. In fact, there have been arguments that the 100-mile zone violates the Fourth Amendment, which gives people the right to be protected from unreasonable searches and seizures of property by the government. Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently upheld these practices.

One question that Lornet Turnbull asks in her YES! article “Two-Thirds of Americans Live in the ‘Constitution-Free Zone’” is, “How should we decide who is welcome in the U.S and who is not?” Instead of focusing on immigrants, how about we focus on the people who shoot up schools, rape girls, exploit women for human sex trafficking, and sell drugs? These are the people who make our country unsafe; they are the ones who shouldn’t be accepted. Even if they are citizens and have the legal right to live here, they still shouldn’t be included. If they are the ones making this country unsafe, then what gives them the right to live here?

I don’t think that the Constitution-free zone is an effective and justifiable way to make this country more “secure.” If someone isn’t causing any trouble in the United States and is just simply living their life, then they should be welcomed here. We shouldn’t have to live in fear that our rights will be taken away. I believe that it’s unfair for people to automatically think that it’s the Hispanics that make this country unsafe. Sure, get all the undocumented people out of the United States, but it’s not going to make this country any safer. It is a society that promotes violence that makes us unsafe, not a race.

Emma Hernandez-Sanchez is a freshman who is passionate about literature and her education. Emma wan ts to inspire others to be creative and try their best. She enjoys reading and creating stories that spark imagination. 

  Powerful Voice Winner

Tiara Lewis

Columbus City Preparatory Schools for Girls,

Columbus, Ohio

Hold Your Head High and Keep Those Fists Down

How would you feel if you walked into a store and salespeople were staring at you? Making you feel like you didn’t belong. Judging you. Assuming that you were going to take something, even though you might have $1,000 on you to spend. Sometimes it doesn’t matter. This is because people will always judge you. It might not be because of your race but for random reasons, like because your hair is black instead of dirty blonde. Or because your hair is short and not long. Or just because they are having a bad day. People will always find ways to bring you down and accuse you of something, but that doesn’t mean you have to go along with it.

Every time I entered a store, I would change my entire personality. I would change the way I talked and the way I walked. I always saw myself as needing to fit in. If a store was all pink, like the store Justice, I would act like a girly girl. If I was shopping in a darker store, like Hot Topic, I would hum to the heavy metal songs and act more goth. I had no idea that I was feeding into stereotypes.

When I was 11, I walked into Claire’s, a well-known store at the mall. That day was my sister’s birthday. Both of us were really happy and had money to spend. As soon as we walked into the store, two employees stared me and my sister down, giving us cold looks. When we went to the cashier to buy some earrings, we thought everything was fine. However, when we walked out of the store, there was a policeman and security guards waiting. At that moment, my sister and I looked at one another, and I said, in a scared little girl voice, “I wonder what happened? Why are they here?”

Then, they stopped us. We didn’t know what was going on. The same employee that cashed us out was screaming as her eyes got big, “What did you steal?” I was starting to get numb. Me and my sister looked at each other and told the truth: “We didn’t steal anything. You can check us.” They rudely ripped through our bags and caused a big scene. My heart was pounding like a drum. I felt violated and scared. Then, the policeman said, “Come with us. We need to call your parents.” While this was happening, the employees were talking to each other, smiling. We got checked again. The police said that they were going to check the cameras, but after they were done searching us, they realized that we didn’t do anything wrong and let us go about our day.

Walking in the mall was embarrassing—everybody staring, looking, and whispering as we left the security office. This made me feel like I did something wrong while knowing I didn’t. We went back to the store to get our shopping bags. The employees sneered, “Don’t you niggers ever come in this store again. You people always take stuff. This time you just got lucky.” Their faces were red and frightening. It was almost like they were in a scary 3D movie, screaming, and coming right at us. I felt hurt and disappointed that someone had the power within them to say something so harsh and wrong to another person. Those employees’ exact words will forever be engraved in my memory.

In the article, “Two-Thirds of Americans Live in the ‘Constitution-Free Zone’,” Lornet Turnbull states, “In January, they stopped a man in Indio, California, as he was boarding a Los Angeles-bound bus. While questioning this man about his immigration status, agents told him his ‘shoes looked suspicious,’ like those of someone who had recently crossed the border.” They literally judged him by his shoes. They had no proof of anything. If a man is judged by his shoes, who else and what else are being judged in the world?

In the novel  To Kill a Mockingbird , a character named Atticus states, “You just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, don’t you let’em get your goat. Try fighting with your head for a change.” No matter how much you might try to change yourself, your hairstyle, and your clothes, people will always make assumptions about you. However, you never need to change yourself to make a point or to feel like you fit in. Be yourself. Don’t let those stereotypes turn into facts.

Tiara Lewis is in the eighth grade. Tiara plays the clarinet and is trying to change the world— one essay at a time. She is most often found curled up on her bed, “Divergent” in one hand and a cream-filled doughnut in the other.

Hailee Park

 Wielding My Swords

If I were a swordsman, my weapons would be my identities. I would wield one sword in my left hand and another in my right. People expect me to use both fluently, but I’m not naturally ambidextrous. Even though I am a right-handed swordsman, wielding my dominant sword with ease, I must also carry a sword in my left, the heirloom of my family heritage. Although I try to live up to others’ expectations by using both swords, I may appear inexperienced while attempting to use my left. In some instances, my heirloom is mistaken for representing different families’ since the embellishments look similar.

Many assumptions are made about my heirloom sword based on its appearance, just as many assumptions are made about me based on my physical looks. “Are you Chinese?” When I respond with ‘no,’ they stare at me blankly in confusion. There is a multitude of Asian cultures in the United States, of which I am one. Despite what many others may assume, I am not Chinese; I am an American-born Korean.

“Then… are you Japanese?” Instead of asking a broader question, like “What is your ethnicity?,” they choose to ask a direct question. I reply that I am Korean. I like to think that this answers their question sufficiently; however, they think otherwise. Instead, I take this as their invitation to a duel.

They attack me with another question: “Are you from North Korea or South Korea?” I don’t know how to respond because I’m not from either of those countries; I was born in America. I respond with “South Korea,” where my parents are from because I assume that they’re asking me about my ethnicity. I’m not offended by this situation because I get asked these questions frequently. From this experience, I realize that people don’t know how to politely ask questions about identity to those unlike them. Instead of asking “What is your family’s ethnicity?,” many people use rude alternatives, such as “Where are you from?,” or “What language do you speak?”

When people ask these questions, they make assumptions based on someone’s appearance. In my case, people make inferences like:

“She must be really good at speaking Korean.”

“She’s Asian; therefore, she must be born in Asia.”

“She’s probably Chinese.”

These thoughts may appear in their heads because making assumptions is natural. However, there are instances when assumptions can be taken too far. Some U.S. Border Patrol agents in the “Constitution-free zone” have made similar assumptions based on skin color and clothing. For example, agents marked someone as an undocumented immigrant because “his shoes looked suspicious, like those of someone who had recently crossed the border.”

Another instance was when a Jamaican grandmother was forced off a bus when she was visiting her granddaughter. The impetus was her accent and the color of her skin. Government officials chose to act on their assumptions, even though they had no solid proof that the grandmother was an undocumented immigrant. These situations just touch the surface of the issue of racial injustice in America.

When someone makes unfair assumptions about me, they are pointing their sword and challenging me to a duel; I cannot refuse because I am already involved. It is not appropriate for anyone, including Border Patrol agents, to make unjustified assumptions or to act on those assumptions. Border Patrol agents have no right to confiscate the swords of the innocent solely based on their conjectures. The next time I’m faced with a situation where racially ignorant assumptions are made about me, I will refuse to surrender my sword, point it back at them, and triumphantly fight their ignorance with my cultural pride.

Hailee Park is an eighth grader who enjoys reading many genres. While reading, Hailee recognized the racial injustices against immigrants in America, which inspired her essay. Hailee plays violin in her school’s orchestra and listens to and composes music. 

Aminata Toure

East Harlem School, New York City, N.Y.

We Are Still Dreaming

As a young Muslim American woman, I have been labeled things I am not: a terrorist, oppressed, and an ISIS supporter. I have been accused of planning 9/11, an event that happened before I was born. Lately, in the media, Muslims have been portrayed as supporters of a malevolent cause, terrorizing others just because they do not have the same beliefs. I often scoff at news reports that portray Muslims in such a light, just as I scoff at all names I’ve been labeled. They are words that do not define me. 

In a land where labels have stripped immigrants of their personalities, they are now being stripped of something that makes them human: their rights. The situation described in Lornet Turnbull’s article, “Two-Thirds of Americans are Living in the ‘Constitution-Free Zone’,” goes directly against the Constitution, the soul of this country, something that asserts that we are all equal before the law. If immigrants do not have protection from the Constitution, is there any way to feel safe?

Although most insults are easy to shrug off, they are still threatening. I am ashamed when I feel afraid to go to the mosque. Friday is an extremely special day when we gather together to pray, but lately, I haven’t been going to the mosque for Jummah prayers. I have realized that I can never feel safe when in a large group of Muslims because of the widespread hatred of Muslims in the United States, commonly referred to as Islamophobia. Police surround our mosque, and there are posters warning us about dangerous people who might attack our place of worship because we have been identified as terrorists.

I wish I could tune out every news report that blasts out the headline “Terrorist Attack!” because I know that I will be judged based on the actions of someone else. Despite this anti-Muslim racism, what I have learned from these insults is that I am proud of my faith. I am a Muslim, but being Muslim doesn’t define me. I am a writer, a student, a dreamer, a friend, a New Yorker, a helper, and an American. I am unapologetically me, a Muslim, and so much more. I definitely think everyone should get to know a Muslim. They would see that some of us are also Harry Potter fans, not just people planning to bomb the White House.

Labels are unjustly placed on us because of the way we speak, the color of our skin, and what we believe in—not for who we are as individuals. Instead, we should all take more time to get to know one another. As Martin Luther King Jr. said in his “I Have a Dream” speech, we should be judged by the content of our character and not the color of our skin. To me, it seems Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream is a dream that should be a reality. But, for now, we are dreaming.

Aminata Toure is a Guinean American Muslim student. Aminata loves spoken-word poetry and performs in front of hundreds of people at her school’s annual poetry slam. She loves writing, language, history, and West African food and culture. Aminata wants to work at the United Nations when she grows up.

From the Author 

Dear Alessandra, Cain, Daniel, Tiara, Emma, Hailee, Aminata and Ethan,

I am moved and inspired by the thought each of you put into your responses to my story about this so-called “Constitution-free zone.” Whether we realize it or not, immigration in this country impacts all of us— either because we are immigrants ourselves, have neighbors, friends, and family who are, or because we depend on immigrants for many aspects of our lives—from the food we put on our tables to the technology that bewitches us. It is true that immigrants enrich our society in so many important ways, as many of you point out.

And while the federal statute that permits U.S. Border Patrol officers to stop and search at will any of the 200 million of us in this 100-mile shadow border, immigrants have been their biggest targets. In your essays, you highlight how unjust the law is—nothing short of racial profiling. It is heartening to see each of you, in your own way, speaking out against the unfairness of this practice.

Alessandra, you are correct, the immigration system in this country is in shambles. You make a powerful argument about how profiling ostracizes entire communities and how the warrantless searches allowed by this statute impede trust-building between law enforcement and the people they are called on to serve.

And Cain, you point out how this 100-mile zone, along with other laws in the state of Texas where you attended school, make people feel like they’re “always under surveillance, and that, at any moment, you may be pulled over to be questioned and detained.” It seems unimaginable that people live their lives this way, yet millions in this country do.

You, Emma, for example, speak of living in a kind of silent fear since Donald Trump took office, even though you were born in this country and your parents are here legally. You are right, “We shouldn’t have to live in fear that our rights will be taken away.”

And Aminata, you write of being constantly judged and labeled because you’re a Muslim American. How unfortunate and sad that in a country that generations of people fled to search for religious freedom, you are ashamed at times to practice your own. The Constitution-free zone, you write, “goes directly against the Constitution, the soul of this country, something that asserts that we are all equal before the law.”

Tiara, I could personally relate to your gripping account of being racially profiled and humiliated in a store. You were appalled that the Greyhound passenger in California was targeted by Border Patrol because they claimed his shoes looked like those of someone who had walked across the border: “If a man is judged by his shoes,” you ask, “who else and what else are getting judged in the world?”

Hailee, you write about the incorrect assumptions people make about you, an American born of Korean descent, based solely on your appearance and compared it to the assumptions Border Patrol agents make about those they detain in this zone.

Daniel, you speak of the role of political fearmongering in immigration. It’s not new, but under the current administration, turning immigrants into boogiemen for political gain is currency. You write that “For some politicians, it is easier to sell a border wall to a scared population than it is to explain the need for reformed immigration policy.”

And Ethan, you recognize the contributions immigrants make to this country through the connections we all make with them and the strength they bring to our society.

Keep speaking your truth. Use your words and status to call out injustice wherever and whenever you see it. Untold numbers of people spoke out against this practice by Border Patrol and brought pressure on Greyhound to change. In December, the company began offering passengers written guidance—in both Spanish and English—so they understand what their rights are when officers board their bus. Small steps, yes, but progress nonetheless, brought about by people just like you, speaking up for those who sometimes lack a voice to speak up for themselves.

With sincere gratitude,

Lornet Turnbull

Lornet Turnbull is an editor for YES! and a Seattle-based freelance writer. Follow her on Twitter  @TurnbullL .

We received many outstanding essays for the Winter 2019 Student Writing Competition. Though not every participant can win the contest, we’d like to share some excerpts that caught our eye:

After my parents argued with the woman, they told me if you can fight with fists, you prove the other person’s point, but when you fight with the power of your words, you can have a much bigger impact. I also learned that I should never be ashamed of where I am from. —Fernando Flores, The East Harlem School, New York City, N.Y.

Just because we were born here and are privileged to the freedom of our country, we do not have the right to deprive others of a chance at success. —Avalyn Cox, Brier Terrace Middle School, Brier, Wash.

Maybe, rather than a wall, a better solution to our immigration problem would be a bridge. —Sean Dwyer, Lane Community College, Eugene, Ore.

If anything, what I’ve learned is that I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to change our world. I don’t know how to make a difference, how to make my voice heard. But I have learned the importance of one word, a simple two-letter word that’s taught to the youngest of us, a word we all know but never recognize: the significance of ‘we.’ —Enna Chiu, Highland Park High School, Highland Park, N.J.

Not to say the Border Patrol should not have authorization to search people within the border, but I am saying it should be near the border, more like one mile, not 100. —Cooper Tarbuck, Maranacook Middle School, Manchester, Maine.

My caramel color, my feminism, my Spanish and English language, my Mexican culture, and my young Latina self gives me the confidence to believe in myself, but it can also teach others that making wrong assumptions about someone because of their skin color, identity, culture, looks or gender can make them look and be weaker. —Ana Hernandez, The East Harlem School, New York City, N.Y.

We don’t need to change who we are to fit these stereotypes like someone going on a diet to fit into a new pair of pants. —Kaylee Meyers, Brier Terrace Middle School, Brier, Wash.

If a human being with no criminal background whatsoever has trouble entering the country because of the way he or she dresses or speaks, border protection degenerates into arbitrariness. —Jonas Schumacher, Heidelberg University of Education, Heidelberg, Germany

I believe that you should be able to travel freely throughout your own country without the constant fear of needing to prove that you belong here . —MacKenzie Morgan, Lincoln Middle School, Ypsilanti, Mich.

America is known as “the Land of Opportunity,” but this label is quickly disappearing. If we keep stopping those striving for a better life, then what will become of this country? —Ennyn Chiu, Highland Park Middle School, Highland Park, N.J.

The fact that two-thirds of the people in the U.S. are living in an area called the “Constitution-free zone” is appalling. Our Constitution was made to protect our rights as citizens, no matter where we are in the country. These systems that we are using to “secure” our country are failing, and we need to find a way to change them. —Isis Liaw, Brier Terrace Middle School, Brier, Wash.

I won’t let anyone, especially a man, tell me what I can do, because I am a strong Latina. I will represent where I come from, and I am proud to be Mexican. I will show others that looks can be deceiving. I will show others that even the weakest animal, a beautiful butterfly, is tough, and it will cross any border, no matter how challenging the journey may be. —Brittany Leal, The East Harlem School, New York City, N.Y.

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Trump start

Fear of uncontrolled immigration is upsetting the political landscape in the run-up to the presidential election.

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At a rally in December, former president Donald Trump went as far as to say that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

TURN ON SOUND

Americans’ mistrust of new immigrants is hardly new. In fact, it exhibits a striking resemblance to the prevailing fears 100 years ago.

The country might soon need to “station a soldier every hundred yards on our borders to keep out the hordes,” argued an article in Wisconsin in April of 1924.

Treating Japan in the same way as “ white nations, ” an Illinois newspaper cautioned in May of 1924, could allow Japanese immigrants to own land and seek the “ rights given white immigrants. ”

“ America, ” wrote James J. Davis, the secretary of labor, in the New York Times in February of 1924, should not be “ a conglomeration of racial groups, each advocating a different set of ideas and ideals according to their bringing up, but a homogeneous race. ”

How America tried and failed to stay White

100 years ago the u.s. tried to limit immigration to white europeans. instead, diversity triumphed., “i think that we have sufficient stock in america now for us to shut the door.”.

That sounds like Donald Trump, right? Maybe on one of his campaign stops? It certainly fits the mood of the country. This year, immigration became voters’ “ most important problem ” in Gallup polling for the first time since Central Americans flocked to the border in 2019. More than half of Americans perceive immigrants crossing the border illegally as a “ critical threat .”

Yet the sentiment expressed above is almost exactly 100 years old. It was uttered by Sen. Ellison DuRant Smith , a South Carolina Democrat, on April 9, 1924. And it helped set the stage for a historic change in U.S. immigration law, which imposed strict national quotas for newcomers that would shape the United States’ ethnic makeup for decades to come.

Immigration was perceived as a problem a century ago, too. Large numbers of migrants from Eastern and Southern Europe flocked to the United States during the first two decades of the 20th century, sparking a public outcry over unfamiliar intruders who lacked the Northern and Western European blood of previous migrant cohorts.

On May 15, 1924, Congress passed the Johnson-Reed Act , which would constrain immigration into the United States to preserve, in Smith’s words, America’s “pure, unadulterated Anglo-Saxon stock.”

“It is for the preservation of that splendid stock that has characterized us that I would make this not an asylum for the oppressed of all countries,” Smith continued , speaking of America not 40 years after the Statue of Liberty was erected in New York Harbor, with its open arms for all humankind. Immigration, Smith noted, should be shaped “to assimilate and perfect that splendid type of manhood that has made America the foremost Nation in her progress and in her power.”

The act set the rules of who’s in and who’s out. Here is what happened:

In the 1800s, most immigrants arriving in the United States came from Western and Northern Europe . By the early 1900s, that flow changed to Eastern and Southern European countries , such as Italy, Russia and Hungary.

The 1924 Johnson-Reed Act established narrow national quotas. Immigration from Asia and Eastern and Southern Europe was slashed to a trickle.

Western and Northern European countries such as Germany, Britain and Ireland were given the largest allowances.

The act did not set quotas for immigrants from the Western Hemisphere, including Canada, Mexico, and countries in the Caribbean and South America .

The Hart-Celler Act of 1965 undid the national quotas, and immigration surged afterward.

Despite continued attempts to preserve the nation’s White European identity, immigrants today come from a diverse range of nations, mostly in the Global South.

Fast-forward 100 years and the United States no longer has quotas. But it still has not landed on an immigration policy it can live with. Trump asks why the United States can’t take in immigrants only from “ nice countries, you know, like Denmark, Switzerland ,” instead of “countries that are a disaster.” President Biden, who not even four years ago wanted to grant citizenship to millions of unauthorized immigrants, today wants to “ shut down the border right now .”

All the while, desperate immigrants from around the world keep fleeing poverty, repression and violence, launching themselves into the most perilous journey of their lives to reach the United States.

The public conversation over immigration that has raged at least since the days of the 1924 Johnson-Reed law can explain Washington’s policy failure: There is no way America can reconcile the sentiments embodied by the Statue of Liberty — “Give me your tired, your poor,” etc. — with its deep-seated fear that immigrants will reshape its ethnic makeup, its identity and the balance of political power.

Try as they might, policymakers have always been unable to protect the White America they wanted to preserve. Today’s “melting pot” was built largely with policies that didn’t work. Millions upon millions of migrants have overcome what obstacles the United States has tried to put in their way.

Israel Zangwill’s play “The Melting Pot” — which opened at the Columbia Theatre in D.C. on Oct. 5, 1908 — has a narrow understanding of diversity by current standards. The play was an ersatz “Romeo and Juliet,” featuring a Jewish Russian immigrant and a Christian Russian immigrant. But it carried a lofty message. “Germans and Frenchmen, Irishmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians — into the crucible with you all!” trumpets David Quixano, the main character. “God is making the American.”

Americans, however, were already uncomfortable with that fluid sense of identity. In 1910, two years after the debut of Zangwill’s play, geneticist Charles Davenport founded the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island. It provided the intellectual grounding for America’s increasingly overt xenophobia.

In “Heredity in Relation to Eugenics,” Davenport wrote that Italians had a “tendency to crimes of personal violence,” that Jews were prone to “intense individualism and ideals of gain at the cost of any interest,” and that letting more of them in would make the American population “darker in pigmentation, smaller in stature, more mercurial,” as well as “more given to crimes of larceny, kidnapping, assault, murder, rape, and sex-immorality.”

Harry Laughlin, another Cold Spring Harbor researcher, told members of the House Immigration and Naturalization Committee in 1922 that these new immigrants brought “inferior mental and social qualities” that couldn’t be expected “to raise above, or even to approximate,” those of Americans descended from earlier, Northern and Western European stock.

The Johnson-Reed Act wasn’t the first piece of legislation to protect the bloodstream from the outside world. That would have been the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which kept Chinese migrants out for six decades. In general, though, immigration law before World War I excluded people based on income and education, as well as physical and moral qualities — not on ethnicity and its proxy, nation of origin.

In 1907, “imbeciles, feeble minded persons, unaccompanied children under 17 years of age” and those “mentally or physically defective” were put on the excluded list, alongside women coming for “prostitution or for any other immoral purpose.” The Immigration Act of 1917 tried to limit immigration to the literate.

But the large number of migrants arriving from Eastern and Southern Europe since the turn of the 20th century refocused the national debate. In 1907, Congress established the Dillingham Commission , which would reach for arguments from eugenics to recommend choosing migrants to maintain existing American bloodlines via “the limitation of the number of each race arriving each year” to a percentage of those living in the United States years before. The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 did just that, establishing the first specific national quotas.

In 1924, the Johnson-Reed Act completed the project, reshaping the nation’s identity over the next four decades. It set an overall ceiling of 165,000 immigrants per year, about 20 percent of the average before World War I, carefully allotting quotas for preferred bloodstreams. Japanese people were completely excluded , as were Chinese people. Elsewhere, the act established national quotas equivalent to 2 percent of citizens from each country recorded in the 1890 U.S. Census. Germans received 51,227 slots; Greeks just 100. Nearly 160,000 Italians had entered the United States every year in the first two decades of the century. Their quota was set at less than 4,000.

And, so, the melting pot was purified — and emptied: Two years after the Johnson-Reed Act, sociologist Henry Pratt Fairchild published “The Melting-Pot Mistake,” a reiteration of the racial logic that undergirded all the new restrictions. By 1970, immigrants made up less than 5 percent of the population, down from nearly 15 percent in 1910.

There can be “no doubt that if America is to remain a stable nation it must continue to be a white man’s country for an indefinite period to come,” Fairchild wrote . “An exclusion policy toward all non-white groups is wholly defensible in theory and practice, however questionable may have been the immediate means by which this policy has been put into effect at successive periods in our history.”

And yet perhaps the most important lesson to flow from this moment is that the levee didn’t hold. Today, immigrants are back at 14 percent of the population. And despite the repeated efforts over the decades to preserve the ethnic purity proposed in Johnson-Reed, the pot filled up with undesirables again. Migrants from Europe accounted for three-quarters of the foreign-born in 1960 but only 10 percent in 2022 .

The Statue of Liberty is arguably the nation’s most prominent symbol, representing America as a land of opportunity and refuge. But the nation’s tolerance of outsiders has mostly been shaped by baser instincts, a tug of war between the hunger for foreign labor to feed a galloping economy and the fear of how the newcomers might change what it means to be American.

Immigration restrictions relax when the immigrant population is comparatively small and jobs plentiful, and they tighten when the foreign footprint increases and jobs get relatively scarce. Muzaffar Chishti of the Migration Policy Institute points out that even recent migrants turn against newer cohorts, fearful that they may take their jobs and transform their communities.

Fifteen percent, Chishti suggests, might be the point when the uneasy equilibrium tips decidedly against newcomers. Foreign-born people amounted to about 15 percent of the population when the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed, and again when the Johnson-Reed Act was signed into law.

Restrictive immigration laws

were passed after the foreign-born

population reached 15 percent.

Share of the population born outside the United States

Celler Act,

Ultimately, policies

meant to preserve

a White America failed.

Share of the population that is not White

Source: Analysis of U.S. Census and American

Community Survey data through IPMUS

Restrictive immigration laws were passed

after the foreign-born population

reached 15 percent.

Ultimately, policies meant to preserve

Source: Analysis of U.S. Census and American Community Survey

data through IPMUS

Source: Analysis of U.S. Census and American Community Survey data through IPMUS

39% in 2022

15% in 2022

In the 1960s, when the foreign-born share was dropping to about 5 percent of the population, however, other considerations became more important. In 1965, the quotas established four decades earlier were finally disowned.

Their demise was, in part, a barefaced attempt to woo the politically influential voting bloc of Italian Americans, who had a hard time bringing their relatives to the United States under the 1924 limits. There was a foreign policy motivation, too: The quotas arguably undermined the international position of the United States, emerging then as a leader of the postwar order in a decolonizing world.

The story Americans most like to hear is that the end of the quotas was a natural outcome of the civil rights movement, in tension with the race-based preferences implicit in the immigration law. “Everywhere else in our national life, we have eliminated discrimination based on one’s place of birth,” Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy said in 1964. “Yet this system is still the foundation of our immigration law.”

But the most interesting aspect of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, also known as the Hart-Celler Act, which did away with the quotas, lies in what it did not try to change. Though the new immigration law removed quotas by nationality, it did not abandon the project of protecting the predominant European bloodstream from inferior new strains. It just changed the instrument: It replaced national quotas with family ties .

Rep. Michael Feighan, an Ohio Democrat who chaired the House subcommittee on immigration, ditched the original idea of replacing the nationality quotas with preferences for immigrants with valuable skills. In their place, he wrote in preferences for the family members of current residents, which ensured new arrivals remained European and White.

It was paramount to preserve America as it was. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who managed the passage of Hart-Celler through the Senate, promised his fellow Americans that the new legislation “will not upset the ethnic mix of our society.”

“This bill that we will sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions,” President Lyndon B. Johnson claimed on Oct. 3, 1965, as he signed the Hart-Celler Act into law at the foot of the Statue of Liberty. “It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives, or really add importantly to either our wealth or our power.”

That didn’t quite work out as planned. Migrants allowed in under Hart-Celler have ushered in an America that looks very different from the one Johnson addressed. Half of the foreign born today come from Latin America; about 3 in 10 from Asia. Fewer than 6 in 10 Americans today are White and not of Hispanic origin, down from nearly 9 in 10 in 1965. Hispanics account for about one-fifth of the population. African Americans make up nearly 14 percent; Asian Americans just over 6 percent.

Share of the population that

is not White or is Hispanic

Race-specific population includes Hispanics.

Other non-White

Native American

Multiple races

W hite Hispanic

Source: U.S. Census and American Community

Survey through IPUMS. Data through 2019,

the most recent comparable numbers.

White Hispanic

Source: U.S. Census and American Community Survey

through IPUMS. Data through 2019, the most recent

comparable numbers.

Share of the population that is

not White or is Hispanic

Source: U.S. Census and American Community Survey through IPUMS. Data through 2019, the most recent

And some of the old arguments are back. In 2017, the Harvard economist George J. Borjas published a tome about foreigners’ impact on the United States, in which he updated the debate over migrant quality to the post-1965 era: Newer cohorts, mostly from Latin America and other countries in the Global South were, he said, worse than earlier migrants of European stock. “Imagine that immigrants do carry some baggage with them,” he wrote. “That baggage, when unloaded in the new environment, dilutes some of the North’s productive edge.”

That the Hart-Celler law did, in fact, drastically change the nature of the United States is arguably the single most powerful reason that U.S. immigration politics have again taken a dark, xenophobic turn. But even as arguments from eugenics are getting a new moment in the sun to justify new rounds of draconian immigration restrictions, the six decades since 1965 suggest the project to preserve a White European America has already lost.

What went wrong? Much of Europe got rich, and this dramatically reduced its citizens’ incentive to move to the United States. Instead, immigrants from poorer reaches of the planet — from Asia but predominantly from Latin America — took the opportunity to invite their relatives into the land of opportunity.

As usual, the U.S. economy’s appetite for foreign labor played a large role. Mexicans, like people from across the Americas, had been mostly ignored by immigration law. They were not subject to the 1924 quotas, perhaps because there weren’t that many of them coming into the United States or perhaps because their labor was needed in the Southwest — especially during the world wars.

Mexicans suffered periodic backlashes, such as when the Hoover administration figured that kicking out millions of Mexicans and Mexican-looking Americans was a smart political move in response to the Great Depression, or when President Dwight D. Eisenhower launched “ Operation Wetback ,” a mass deportation effort created ostensibly to raise wages in the South.

In any event, the first quota for immigrants from the Western Hemisphere as a whole came with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Nonetheless, the story of immigration after that was largely a Mexican affair. By 2000, Mexicans accounted for 30 percent of the foreign-born population, up from 6 percent 40 years earlier.

Unsurprisingly, the zeitgeist again took to worrying about the pollution of the American spirit. Political scientist Samuel P. Huntington fretted that “the persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages.”

And still, the U.S. political system proved powerless to stem the tide. U.S. economic interests — and the draw they exerted on immigrants from Mexico and other unstable economies south of the border — overpowered the ancestral fears.

The last major shot at immigration reform passed in Congress, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 , was based on a supposed grand bargain, which included offering legal status to several million unauthorized immigrants, bigger guest-worker programs to sate employers’ demands for labor and a clampdown on illegal work that came with a penalty on employers who hired unauthorized workers.

Employers, of course, quickly found a workaround. Unauthorized migration from Mexico surged, and the mass legalization opened the door to family-based chain migration on a large scale, as millions of newly legalized Mexican immigrants brought their family members into the country. In 1980, there were 2.2 million Mexican immigrants in the United States. By 2022, there were 11 million .

Migration today, again, has taken a new turn. Migrants are no longer mostly single Mexicans crossing the border surreptitiously to melt into the U.S. labor force. They are families, and they come from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba and Ecuador, China and India. Mexicans accounted for fewer than a quarter of migrant encounters with U.S. agents along the border in the first half of fiscal 2024.

The most explosive difference is that immigration today is much more visible than it has possibly ever been. Immigrants don’t try to squeeze across the border undetected. They cross it without permission, turn themselves in and ask for asylum, overwhelming immigration courts and perpetuating the image of a border out of control.

Americans’ sense of threat might have more to do with the chaos at the border than with immigration itself. Still, the sense of foreboding draws from that same old well of fear. That fear is today arguably more acute than when ethnic quotas were written into U.S. immigration law in 1924. Because today, the White, Anglo-Saxon Americans who believe this nation to be their birthright are truly under demographic siege.

Twenty years from now, White, non-Hispanic Americans will slip below 50 percent of the population and become just another, albeit big, minority. For Trump’s electoral base of older, White rural voters, the prospect of non-Whites acquiring power to challenge their status as embodiments of American identity amounts to an existential menace that may justify radical action.

Immigration has reengineered U.S. politics. Non-White voters account for some 40 percent of Democrats . Eighty-one percent of Republican voters, by contrast, are both White and not Hispanic. The nation’s polarized politics have become, in some nontrivial sense, a proxy for a conflict between different interpretations of what it means to be American.

The renewed backlash against immigration has little to offer the American project, though. Closing the door to new Americans would be hardly desirable, a blow to one of the nation’s greatest sources of dynamism. Raw data confirms how immigrants are adding to the nation’s economic growth , even while helping keep a lid on inflation .

Anyway, that horse left the stable. The United States is full of immigrants from, in Trump’s memorable words, “s---hole countries.” The project to set this in reverse is a fool’s errand. The 1924 Johnson-Reed immigration law might have succeeded in curtailing immigration. But the restrictions did not hold. From Presidents Johnson to Trump, efforts to circle the wagons around some ancestral White American identity failed.

We are extremely lucky it did. Contra Sen. Ellison DuRant Smith’s 100-year old prescriptions, the nation owes what greatness it has to the many different women and men it has drawn from around the world to build their futures. This requires a different conversation — one that doesn’t feature mass expulsions and concentration camps but focuses on constructing a new shared American identity that fits everyone, including the many more immigrants who will arrive from the Global South for years to come.

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Biden considers temporarily closing southern border to curb flow of migrant crossings

Laura Barrón-López Laura Barrón-López

Shrai Popat Shrai Popat

Ian Couzens Ian Couzens

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• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/biden-considers-temporarily-closing-southern-border-to-curb-flow-of-migrant-crossings

The Biden administration is preparing an executive action that would allow the president to temporarily shut down the southern border. This comes amid pressure from both sides of the aisle to curb the flow of border crossings. White House Correspondent Laura Barrón-López reports.

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Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

Amna Nawaz:

The Biden administration is preparing an executive action that would allow President Biden to temporarily shut down the U.S. southern border. This comes amid pressure from both sides of the aisle to curb the flow of border crossings.

Our White House correspondent, Laura Barron-Lopez, has been covering this. And she joins me now.

So, Laura, what do we know about this expected executive order?

Laura Barron-Lopez:

This executive action would use a section of U.S. immigration law, Amna, that's known as 212(f) authority that gives President Biden the powers to suspend the entry of migrants temporarily.

It's going to be expected to be similar language that was used in the bipartisan Senate border deal that failed. For example, if there is an average of 5,000 migrants encountered each day over the course of seven days, then this authority would be triggered, and President Biden would be able to shut down the border until those encounters fall.

Now, the White House and a White House official told me that no final decisions have been made about an executive action that is potentially being considered. But sources told me that this specific executive action could come as early as next week after the Mexican elections on June 2.

So, when you look at who has been encountered at the U.S. southern border recently, who would this kind of executive action impact?

Sources told me that this executive action is expected to apply to most migrants, but unaccompanied children often receive humanitarian exemptions in an executive action like this.

The big picture, Amna, is that this is going to restrict who can seek asylum ultimately. And when you look at the picture on the southern border right now, it's important to note that, since December of 2023, the total number of encounters by Border Patrol at the southern border has decreased from almost 250,000 to roughly 129,000 in April this year, according to Customs and Border Protection.

And most of those are single adults.

So, I know you have been talking to immigration lawyers, to your Democratic sources. How is news of this expected order going down among them?

One immigration advocate I spoke to said that the administration should expect legal challenges to this.

I also spoke to Melissa Adamson, who is an immigration lawyer for the National Center for Youth Law, who said that closing the border could ultimately end up being very harmful to children and to families.

Melissa Adamson, National Center for Youth Law: So what we saw in 2020 was that closing the border exposes children to more exploitation, to kidnapping, to physical and sexual violence while they're stranded in Mexico and they wait to cross the border.

And it also leads to increased family separation, because if family units aren't allowed to lawfully present, they may make the impossible choice of trying to send their children across the border alone as unaccompanied minors to try to seek safety in the United States.

We know that, if people can't cross at ports of entry, then they're forced to seek more and more dangerous routes in mountainous areas, in remote desert locations. And when that happens, we know that it leads to more injuries and illness and death as people try to get into the United States.

When I asked the administration about concerns like that from Melissa Adamson, they said that the president is trying to balance both humane pathways of entry for migrants, as well as enforcing control at the border and enforcing border security.

And the White House spokesperson said that they're constantly exploring policy options for the president to take, but they specifically took aim at Republicans for ultimately killing the bipartisan border deal.

Another expert I spoke to, Erika Pinheiro, who runs Al Otro Lado, which is a nonprofit that helps migrants, helps refugees at the border, said that, no matter what, if this executive action is implemented, migrants will continue to come, and that, when she talks to many migrants at the border, they often are not aware of restrictions that are put in place by administrations, be it this administration's or prior ones.

So we know that real immigration reform, meaningful immigration reform, has to come through Congress.

As you mentioned, the president tried to do that through Congress. There was that bipartisan Senate bill that Republicans backed away from. Give us a sense of what kind of political pressure President Biden is under right now on this specific issue.

Multiple Hill sources told me that members of Hispanic Caucus leadership met with President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as White House staff, last week at the White House.

They talked about this coming executive order. They also pressed the president, saying that they wished that he would consider other executive actions that could essentially expand work permits for migrants that are already in the United States. They also raised concerns about the president's outreach to Latino voters.

And some Hispanic lawmakers told me that they ultimately worry that this executive order, as well as language in the bipartisan border bill that a number of Democrats supported in the Senate, would set a standard for future actions, future asylum actions that could be more severe, more restrictive.

Now, again, the president is balancing those concerns with those of moderate Democrats that are facing potentially tough reelections who want tougher actions taken at the border, as well as facing attacks from Republicans who are falsely claiming, Amna, to stir up support among their base, that violent crime has increased because of immigration, despite the fact that the data doesn't show that.

And for a sense of how voters rank it, a Gallup poll from April 2024 found that immigration was the top issue facing the U.S. for Americans they surveyed, outranking the economy. And immigration, Amna, has repeatedly been a top issue for many voters this year so far.

All right. That is our White House correspondent, Laura Barron-Lopez.

Laura, thank you for your reporting.

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Laura Barrón-López is the White House Correspondent for the PBS NewsHour, where she covers the Biden administration for the nightly news broadcast. She is also a CNN political analyst.

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Americans Raced to Get Their Families Out of Gaza. Then the Border Slammed Shut.

The closure this month of the Rafah border crossing into Egypt, the only way out for civilians, has thrown an already complicated system into disarray.

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By Hamed Aleaziz

Reporting from Washington

Ghada Redwan, a 48-year-old pharmacist in Houston, has been trying to get her parents out of Gaza for months. Their bags, packed and ready to go, have been sitting by their door in Rafah, the city where Israel is now conducting a military offensive .

But Ms. Redwan has hit roadblocks at every turn. And like other Palestinian Americans desperate to get their relatives to safety, she has described a confounding bureaucratic maze involving the State Department, the governments of Israel and Egypt, politicians, advocacy groups, lawyers and more.

The closure this month of the Rafah border crossing into Egypt — the only way out for civilians — has thrown an already complicated system into disarray, leading to calls for the United States to make a more forceful effort to evacuate the relatives of American citizens.

“You feel like there’s nothing you can do,” Ms. Redwan said in an interview. “You live comfortably, you have money, you’re a U.S. citizen and your parents are suffering and there’s nothing you can do for them. It is just insane.”

Ms. Redwan last spoke to her mother on Monday morning, one day after an Israeli strike that killed dozens of Palestinians in a camp for displaced people in Rafah.

“There is no safe place,” her mother told her. “Just pray for us.”

Since the start of the war seven months ago, more than 1,800 American citizens and their families have left Gaza with the assistance of the State Department, U.S. officials say. They are only a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of Gazans desperate to leave as the already dire conditions there deteriorate.

And while the vast majority of Gazans have no way to escape, the State Department told Americans late last year that they could reach out to the department for help getting their immediate family members — even those who are not American citizens — onto the border crossing list.

The criteria are strict: Only parents, spouses and unmarried, under-21 children of American citizens are eligible for the assistance. The United States gathers the names and provides them to Israeli and Egyptian authorities, who control the border, and ask that they be allowed to cross.

And then they wait. Families check a Facebook page run by the authorities in Gaza, which gets updated as people are approved to cross into Egypt. If their name appears, they are advised to go immediately to a border crossing.

But that is by no means the end of the story. Often, a person’s name never makes it onto the list being kept at the border, and they are turned away. (And with the Rafah crossing closed since May 7, the Facebook page has not been updated in more than two weeks.) For those who do cross over, they can begin the process of getting a green card and ultimately reuniting with family in the United States.

It is difficult to know how long that process will take. Alicia Nieves, a legal advocate with the Arab American Civil Rights League, said she had a client who escaped Gaza and was able to get a visa to the United States within a month.

But some people wait much longer.

“Every part of this process has been baffling to me,” said Sammy Nabulsi, a lawyer in Massachusetts who has helped families navigate the system to leave Gaza.

Immigrant advocates and some lawmakers have pushed for an overhaul of U.S. assistance, saying the system established after the Russian invasion of Ukraine was far more generous. That system has allowed tens of thousands of Ukrainians to enter the United States, regardless of their familial ties, as long as they have a financial sponsor.

“Given the conditions in Rafah, the lack of aid getting through, these people are unfortunately in the shadow of death. We need to do right by our own citizens, our country, and expand the criteria to get more relatives out and find a path to the U.S.,” Nabulsi said.

Democratic senators including Cory Booker of New Jersey, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Richard J. Durbin of Illinois have also called for expanding the categories of people the U.S. government is willing to help to include siblings, children of siblings and grandchildren, and speeding up processing of applications for humanitarian parole, which allows temporary entry into the United States.

A White House spokesperson said that the government was “constantly evaluating policy proposals to further support Palestinians who are family members of American citizens and may want to join them” in the United States.

Government officials have discussed the idea of allowing some Palestinians in Egypt to enter the United States through the refugee program, as well as considering humanitarian parole, according to three sources with knowledge of the conversations. They asked for anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Republicans in Congress have opposed the idea of allowing refugees from Gaza into the United States.

“With more than a third of Gazans supporting the Hamas militants, we are not confident that your administration can adequately vet this high-risk population for terrorist ties and sympathies before admitting them into the United States,” a group of Republican senators wrote in a letter to President Biden earlier this month.

As the war grinds on, Palestinian Americans in the United States feel powerless to help.

Abdalwahab Hlayel, a 43-year-old businessman in Minnesota, said he worries constantly about his father, stepmother and other family members in Gaza, but he cannot bear to speak to them while their fate is in limbo.

“I hate calling them because every time I call they are expecting good news from me,” said Mr. Hlayel, who submitted their names to the State Department and has had the office of Senator Tina Smith, Democrat of Minnesota, press his family’s case. But the names of his father, who is 73 and diabetic, and his stepmother have never appeared on the Facebook page.

“I have nothing to tell them,” Mr. Hlayel said.

He isn’t even sure his father would leave Gaza, because it would mean leaving behind two of his children, ages 17 and 21, who do not fit the criteria.

So now, Mr. Hlayel spends hours clutching his phone, scanning for updates and tracking the latest news from a tiny enclave where more than 34,000 people have been killed, according to health officials there.

Ms. Smith said she had called the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the State Department for help on the Hlayel family’s behalf.

“Our broken immigration system is not equipped to deal with urgent response situations, and Minnesotans like Abdalwahab are running into red tape and bureaucracy at a moment when processing times mean life or death,” she said in a statement.

Representative Greg Casar, Democrat of Texas, has been advocating on behalf of the parents of Rasheda Alfaiomy, a 33-year-old U.S. citizen who lives in Austin. They are trapped in Gaza, but there is only so much that can be done while the Rafah crossing is closed.

“We are the only hope they have,” said Ms. Alfaiomy, who has more than a dozen relatives in Gaza, in addition to her parents. She said she regularly receives videos of her family members in refugee camps in Gaza begging for help.

“They are crying on the phone,” she said. “The kids are crying. Adults are crying.”

Hamed Aleaziz covers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy. More about Hamed Aleaziz

Our Coverage of the Israel-Hamas War

News and Analysis

Israel’s military said its troops were pressing on with their ground assault of Rafah , even as international outrage  over its operation there intensified in the wake of a deadly airstrike  on a camp for displaced Palestinians.

The temporary pier that the U.S. military constructed and put in place to provide much-needed humanitarian aid for Gaza has broken apart in rough seas , the Pentagon said.

Spain, Norway and Ireland formally recognized an independent Palestinian state . The previously announced moves by the three European nations are largely symbolic , but serve as a rebuke to Israel.

U.S. Military Aid Project: The Pentagon predicted that a stream of humanitarian aid would be arriving in Gaza via the floating pier, but little relief has reached the besieged strip .

Ari Emanuel’s Condemnation: The media executive condemned Netanyahu  for his leadership since the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, a conspicuous statement from one of Hollywood’s most powerful figures.

Amal Clooney Weighs In: The prominent human rights lawyer was on a panel that recommended arrest warrants  for leaders of Israel and Hamas. She had been criticized earlier for not speaking out on the war.