A tipping point can be described as the moment where a seesaw is suspended midair, perfectly stabilized on both sides. It is that precise moment where the scales are about to change on either end. More importantly, it is a time of social transformation. The United States has a rather precarious relationship with its immigration history. The Supreme Court as well as Congress remain instrumental in providing America with its melting pot of culture and capital. Bubbling inside this melting pot are legislations such as SB1070, HB2281 and the Mexican Border Wall; all are simmering after flames of the September 11 attacks. Has this pot reached its boiling point? Or, in referring back to the cyclic American history of fear, economic hardship and scapegoating, perhaps the current focus on immigration is simply another ingredient for the mixture? If the scales won’t be tipped today, United States Immigration as a future can only be predicted by examining its historical relationships with foreign settlers.
The United States has a history of racially targeting minority groups with immigration law. This precedent was set when Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 to specifically limit further Chinese immigration for a period of ten years. The Chinese had immigrated to the Western United States as a result of unsettled conditions in China, the availability of jobs working on railroads, and the Gold Rush that was going on at that time in California. Fear of Asian laborers grew, resulting in the xenophobic "Yellow Peril" expression. Fear mongering cannot be dismissed in analyzing the intentions behind this immigration act. Many Chinese immigrants were denied entry and mistreated due to their Asian origins, and the belief that their “otherness” and sudden influx of numbers would result in a takeover of American culture. Today, this fear festers in the disproportionate attention given to immigration issues. Whether in the form of jobs stolen for cheaper wages, tax dollars cruelly ripped from hardworking Americans to service “illegal aliens,” or “Yellow Peril,” the baseline motivator appears to have remained the same.
The shutting down of immigration during the Great Depression represents only further marginalizing of the very immigrants who founded the American economy. In 1932, President Roosevelt and the State Department sent immigration numbers from 236,000 in 1926 to 23,000 in 1933. This was accompanied by voluntary repatriation to Europe and Mexico, and coerced repatriation and deportation of between 500,000 and 2 million Mexican Americans, mostly citizens, in the Mexican Repatriation. When the economy deteriorates, foreign settlers often find themselves vulnerable and targeted. This is a bi-partisan agenda to create a sense of false security by projecting the dangers of the failing economy on the brown faces of these foreign settlers. It deflects attention from government incompetence as managers of the American economy. Today, Fox News is the most accessible and highly viewed technique of deflection in American History.
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 affected immigration for years to come. A total of 20 foreign-born terrorists were involved. The terrorists had entered the country on tourist or student visas. Four of them, however, had violated the terms of their visas and became “illegal aliens.” The attack exposed long-standing holes in the U.S. immigration system that included failures at visa processing, internal enforcement, and information sharing. This forced the government to look at longstanding immigration policy and restrict it further. September 11 became a catalyst for future border protection, particularly the continued erection and militarization of the Mexican Border Wall. National Security was preached from every pulpit, and immigrants began to seriously suffer the consequences. Today this has resulted in Arizona’s SB1070 bill, as well as the privatization of prisons around the United States. Fear has proved to be a moneymaking business, to the detriment of those held in private detention centers. Legal immigrants are deported due to the color of their skin, and the bias of Fox News prevails. Is this a tipping point?
In conclusion, the seesaw effect will continue for years to come. America’s social transformations have impacted immigration, just as immigrants have effected cultural change. The melting pot of culture will forever continue to be dictated by a cycle of past immigration history and current climates of fear, agenda, and economy.
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