Reexamining illegal Immigration under the labelling theory - Research Paper Example

? The Illegal Immigrant as “Deviant Reexamining Illegal Immigration under the Labelling Theory Introduction This paper discusses illegal immigration and the notion of the illegal immigrant as a “deviant” through the lens of the Labelling Theory. My central argument is that the stigma attached to illegal immigration and the identification of illegal immigrants as deviants is as much reflective of the society that designates illegal immigration as a form of deviance as it is of the behavior of the deviant himself or herself. In examining how mainstream America has depicted and labeled illegal immigrants, this paper draws upon Becker’s essay ‘Labeling Theory’ which appeared in Thio et.al’s Readings in Deviant Behaviour (2008, p. 40), which states that “Deviance is not a quality that lies in behavior itself, but in the interaction between the person who commits an act and those who respond to it.” In order to facilitate better understanding of the topic at hand, this paper will first provide a situational background of Illegal Immigration in the context of the United States. The next part will look at how illegal immigrants have been characterized as deviants by American society, the reasons and attitudes behind this, as well as the socio-economic context that may have triggered or exacerbated these attitudes. Then, we proceed to how the labeling as deviant as turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy, thus festering even deeper problems both in the individual and in the society. Third, this paper will analyze the policies and practices being undertaken to address this so-called deviance and whether or not it these policies and practices are working. Finally, this paper will reflect on the possible directions the immigration policy will take within the next to twenty years and how the immigration debate will be recasted by changing processes and conditions in society. Situational background Much debate has raged over immigration policies in the United States. In the past, the United States had reached out with open arms to immigrants coming from distant shores who want to make this country their home. As a result of this, we have seen America become a melting pot of cultures, offering its embrace to the poor and downtrodden. In many instances, however, social controversies had arisen as a result of the influx of immigrants. This is the current situation at hand. Conservative Americans say that the government has coddled illegal immigrants far too long, and given the current bleak state of the US economy, this is prejudicial to ordinary Americans citizens. Those of immigrant heritage, on the other hand, particularly the Latinos, call for less stringent immigration measures, and continue to go to the US to escape the poverty and desperation in their home countries. Immigration policies are hotly contested and draw divisive lines across the nation. The past quarter has seen the administration of Barack Obama extend a hand to immigrants and counter the anti-immigration wave in the United States. In a news report dated August 19, 2011 by the Los Angeles Times (2011, Internet), the Obama administration was reported to make a commitment to review the cases of 300,000 illegal immigrants who are on deportation trials, and determining what was labeled as “low-priority” offenders. This includes the elderly, victims of crimes, and generally those who would otherwise make contributions to American society as upstanding citizens. The review was announced by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. This was widely seen as an effort by Obama to reach out to Latinos who helped him in his candidacy. It is also to be noted that Obama had deported “393,000 people in the 2010 fiscal year, with an overall deportation record that far exceeds his predecessor, George Bush.” (Foley, 2011, Internet). In another immigrant-friendly move, the Obama administration was also reported to have filed a lawsuit to block Alabama’s immigration law, said to be the toughest anti-illegal immigration set of policies in the country. The lawsuit was caught by a news report in Reuters dated August 1, 2011 as saying, "If allowed to go into effect, H.B. 56's enforcement scheme will conflict with and undermine the federal government's careful balance of immigration enforcement priorities and objectives," (Reuters, 2011, Internet). Illegal Immigrants as Deviants President Obama has been subjected to a lot of criticism as a result of his gestures towards illegal immigrants. This is because the general perception against the illegal immigrant population remains to be negative. They are perceived to be deviants. Certainly, they are going against their law by virtue of the fact that they are in a country when it is not legally permissible for them to be in it. However, the manner with which they have been portrayed or caricaturized by media and by the public at large goes beyond violation of the law. Indeed, stereotypes and labels are attached to them. But how did the labeling of illegal immigrants happen? It is important to note that the process of labeling begins at the behest of a ‘moral entrepreneur’ (Becker, 1963, p. 147), who makes a claim that some behavior or action is wrong and then makes new rules or code of conduct in order to stop that behavior or action, and punish the actor. They package their efforts as a moral crusade, but what really happens is that “they add to the power they derive from the legitimacy of their moral position the power they derive from their superior position in society" (Becker 1963, p. 149). In illegal immigration in the United States, the moral entrepreneurs were those who expressed objections to the unfettered entry of Mexicans into American soil, a phenomenon made complicated by the fact that many of the wealthy and powerful took advantage of the cheap labor provided by these immigrants. Bustamante (1972) presented a fascinating description of the beginnings or root of this labeling of illegal immigrants: The appearance of the Border Patrol in 1924 altered the primary deviance of the illegal entrant by crystallizing a new social reaction to the violation of immigration laws. The new police force was to reveal these primary deviants, violators of immigration laws. In this process, the term ‘wetback’, previously purely descriptive, acquired a new meaning. It became the ‘label’ or ‘stigma’ by which the illegal immigrant was made visible. At the same time, the label ‘wetback’ also became the symbol by which the illegal immigrant was able to identify a new ‘me’ for himself. (p. 708) It was not difficult to see how the immigrants had become treated as deviants. There was rising resentment caused by their presence because they were taking away jobs from the local people, since it became more economically efficient to hire those who do not refuse work even at very low wages and subhuman conditions. Thus, there is a lot of blaming involved. The American farm worker blames the Mexican for depressing the wages. The reaction then was to characterize them as deviants – not only because they were here in the country illegally, but because of a panoply of stereotypes attached to them: uncivilized, stupid, with a penchant for criminal behavior. There is perhaps credence to the observation made by Goode (1974, p. 577) when he said that: We can never fully understand what is deviant until we get a good look at what isn’t. By looking at both, we realize that it is not ‘social cost’ nor any objective threat to society that accounts for behavior labeled as deviant or crystallized into formal law. We couldn’t deal with the issue if we concentrated exclusively on deviant (or criminal) behavior itself. It would have been less complicated perhaps if the issue were only about economics and about jobs. The illegal immigrants were getting jobs from the local and they are distorting the labor markets – that might be a legitimate grievance. However, race and xenophobia tend to complicate the occasion. Not only do the Mexicans (or Filipinos, or Polish, or whatever migrant population) take jobs away from Americans, they are also not like us. They do not speak American English, they have difficulties assimilating, they engage in practices that seem crude, and in some cases, downright bizarre for modern Americans. Thus, the isolation and the alienation are exacerbated. It becomes a potent mix of racial bias and economic resentment. The famous book “The Jungle”, written by Upton Sinclair (1906), was seen by many as a shocking expose into the sordid world of the meatpacking industry and the abysmal working conditions of the meatpackers, who were composed mainly of immigrants desperate for livelihood opportunities in what for them was a completely new frontier. Few saw it for what it was meant to be: a compelling saga of the poverty hopelessness, and crime that attended the lives of the working class immigrants of America from the period spanning the end of the Civil War to the beginning of the First World War. Deviancy as Self-Fulfilling Prophecy It is also argued that the labeling of deviancy has the tendency to be a self-fulfilling prophecy – with the labeled party assuming the label as his identity and perhaps experimenting with other forms of deviance. In cases of alcoholic deviancy, Roman and Trice (1968, p. 245) wrote that, “the mere process of labeling and sick-role assignment may serve to aggravate and perpetuate a condition which is initially under an individual’s control.” An analogy may be drawn here to the case of illegal immigrants. Because they are pushed to the side, because they are treated not as human beings but as burdens, the human tendency is to lash back. There is also a tendency to retreat to social groups where deviant activities are accepted (Bernburg, et. al. 2006, p. 68), and this can push the immigrants into an even deeper web and a life of crime. They may not have been criminals or deviants in their home countries but because of the stereotypes that have been assigned them, they find themselves adopting these stereotypes. This becomes especially so when there are public announcements of the deviancy (Wilkins, 1964, p. 45).Where illegal migrants are concerned, this can take the form of public raids, humiliating arrests by border patrols, even media reports where immigrants are subjected to derision and ridicule. It creates in the illegal immigrant a sense that he or she is being labeled as deviant and criminal by society, and this defines them and determines future actions. Currently, there are plenty of illegal immigrants in the United States, many of whom are from nearby Hispanic countries, most notably still Mexico. It has been found that when the purchasing power of the dollar increases in Mexico, illegal immigration increases, suggesting that illegal immigration is brought on by economic reasons. (Hanson and Spilimbergo, 1996, p. 1). While all of them can technically be called “criminals” because being in the country illegally is a crime, there are many who participate in criminal activity over and above the fact of their illegal immigrant status. We refer to those who engage in drug trafficking, in human trafficking, in illegal possession of firearms, in petty crimes. Thus the phenomenon of illegal immigration causes even greater social problems: human trafficking and drug trafficking. This seems to be confirmed by the fact that the immigrant inmates in American jails are growing. Says the Federation for American Immigration Reform (2007): "The criminal alien problem is growing. Criminal aliens--non-citizens who commit crimes--are a growing threat to public safety and national security, as well as a drain on our scarce criminal justice resources. In 1980, our federal and state prisons housed fewer than 9,000 criminal aliens. By the end of 1999, these same prisons housed over 68,000 criminal aliens. Today, criminal aliens account for over 29 percent of prisoners in Federal Bureau of Prisons facilities and a higher share of all federal prison inmates. These prisoners represent the fastest growing segment of the federal prison population. Even if they are arrested and brought to jail, unfortunately, in some cases it is in the jails where the criminals become more hard-core, instead of becoming rehabilitated. In the jails of Texas, for example, the Texas Chicano Brotherhood is doing active recruitment among young men who find themselves in jail for petty crimes. When they come out, they become active members who graduate from petty theft and vandalism, to murder and drugs and human trafficking. There is no truth therefore to the naive belief that just because someone is in jail, he cannot do damage to society and he no longer poses a threat. There are also grave fiscal impacts. To quote an: August 30, 2006 speech by the Governor of Colorado in front of the US Senate Committee on Budget – We are able to identify the impact to our state correctional system for housing illegal immigrants who are convicted of crimes. In Colorado prisons, we are housing over 950 illegal immigrants who, upon release, will be detained by the federal office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for likely deportation. At a cost of nearly $27,000 per prisoner, the annual cost to taxpayers to house these offenders is over $25 million." Policies, practices, politics This is the sort of problem where it is difficult to draw black and white lines: to say, for example, that the illegal immigrants are the only ones at fault and they are predators, taking jobs from citizens and welfare from the taxpayers who sustain and support the welfare system. But this is an issue with many stakeholders and players. There are the illegal immigrants themselves, who enter the country illegally, or who enter the country legally but whose continued stay becomes illegal because their tourist visa has lapsed. Many of them become victimized as well, particularly the young. There are the American citizens who suffer from the recession and who cannot get jobs because the illegal immigrants are willing to work for much less, and other less-than-adequate work conditions. There are the states that come up with immigration policies for their states, such policies determined by local voter sentiments. There is the federal government under Obama, that has to balance the competing interests of the participants. The perspectives of these participants are shaped by their contexts. The illegal immigrants of course see themselves as victims of poverty and unevenness, and come to the United States to seek a better life. Immigration is seen not as a crime but as part of a bigger structural problem. Certainly, the ordinary Americans also assert fairness and justice when calling for stricter anti-immigrant measures – it is of course unfair that a person who does not pay taxes benefit from a country’s welfare, considering that many of the citizens of that country face vulnerabilities and uncertainties as a result of the current recession climate. The government, as already mentioned, straddles competing interests between different members of the community; at the same time, it straddles its political interests (noting the large Latino voting population) and its legal interest (illegal immigration is still illegal and the executive body cannot amend the law.) The problems that arise out of illegal immigration are manifold and complex, and this also what caused the labeling and isolation of illegal immigrants. While some of the objections against illegal immigrants are caused by racism and xenophobia, there are valid social issues as well. Illegal immigration also creates unfair advantages for cheating corporations. As it is, multi-million dollar enterprises are already becoming richer and richer as a result of illegal immigrants. We see how despite the lack of jobs for American citizens, illegal immigrants are still being hired by companies that want to obtain extra profit by not having to pay the appropriate wages and not having to confer employee benefits. That is why the main reason why illegal immigration is sought to be blocked is because of the unwarranted entry of illegal immigrants into the job market. (Chiswick, 1988, p. 101) Despite the recession and the high unemployment rate, illegal immigrant hiring is still prevalent. Hence, problems abound for all parties: these illegal immigrants are exposed to dangers and hazards, the American citizens are kept out of jobs, the country finds itself with a big debt problem. Reflections What is the future of the immigration debate, ten or twenty years down the road? These are trying times for th United States – the economy is at a downturn, joblessness is a reality for many ordinary Americans, there is a global right-wing trend sweeping over the world as a result of the recession that is making governments erect higher borders. There is reason to believe that the policies will tilt persuasively against illegal immigrants and there will be a stricter implementation of immigration policies. This might mean more border patrols, greater penalties for illegal immigrants, greater penalties for those who hire them. But alongside this, it must bear repeating that we have to reexamine our penchant for labeling people as a result of our fears and our need for “sameness”. It is valid to push for stricter anti-illegal immigrant regulations in order to safeguard American jobs, but it is never valid to judge people on the basis of race or culture, or to make “illegal immigrant” the core identity of the Mexicans, Peruvians, Filipinos and others who enter our borders because this is akin to labeling them. This can cause problems not only for the labeled but for the country as well, and can bring about social consequences with irreversible damages. References Becker, Howard. (1963). Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: Free Press. Becker, Howard. (2008). “Labelling Theory” in Thio, A., Calhoun, T. & Conyers, A. (eds.). Readings in Deviant Behavior (5th ed.). Boston: Pearson.Education,Inc.  Bustamante, J. (1972). “The Wetback as Deviant: An Application of Labeling Theory”. American Journal of Sociology. Vol. 77(4), 706-718. Bernburg, J., Krohn, M. and Rivera, C. (2006). “Official Labelling, Criminal Embeddedness and Subsequent Delinquency: A Longitudinal Test of Labelling Theory”. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency. Vol. 43, pages 67-88. Chiswick, B. (1988). “Illegal Immigration and Border Control.” Journal of Economic Perspectives. Vol. (3), 101-115. Farrington, David P. (1977). “The Effects of Public Labelling.” British Journal of Criminology. Vol. 17, 112-125. Goode, E. (1974). “On Behalf of Labelling Theory.” Social Problems. Vol. 22, 570-583. Foley, E. (2011). “Latinos to Obama: Change on Immigration or else”. Latino Voices Huffington Post. Available at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/16/latinos-to-obama-dont-cou_n_928732.html Goffard, C., Esquivel, P. and Watanabe, T. (2011). “US will review cases of 300,000 illegal immigrants in deportation proceedings.” Los Angeles Times. Available at http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/19/local/la-me-0819-obama-immigration-20110819 Hanson, G. and Spilimbergo, A. 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