The Law Into Their Own Hands by Roxanne Lynn Doty

Author:Roxanne Lynn Doty [Doty, Roxanne Lynn]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Published: 2016-09-30T16:00:00+00:00

5

Attrition Through Enforcement: Constructing Enemies in the Contemporary Immigration "Crisis’’

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, suggested a policy of "attrition through enforcement" as a "third way" to deal with the immigration issue—what he considers a better option than either massive deportation or legalization of the undocumented population of the United States.1 A "third way" is considered desirable by Krikorian and others not because of any inherent objection to mass deportation but simply because such a course of action is deemed unworkable: "Even a tripling or quadrupling of deportations, necessary as that is, can’t be the whole solution."2 In addition to traditional enforcement at the border, the "third way" strategy entails a "firewall policy" that would "prevent illegals from being able to embed themselves in our society. That would involve denying them access to jobs, identification, housing, and in general making it as difficult as possible for an illegal immigrant to live a normal life."3 While no overall formal policy exists that has officially declared attrition through enforcement to be the strategy, it has become a de facto way of dealing with undocumented migration in various locales throughout the country as well as at the national level. Cities and towns across the United States have proposed and adopted various local ordinances that are consistent with this strategy. Operations at the federal level are also consistent with attrition through enforcement.

This chapter argues that this de facto enforcement strategy provides a contemporary example of what a society looks like as it becomes structured along the lines of "the exception." As noted in chapter 1, Nazi Germany is the exemplar of a politics of exceptionalism and is certainly one of the most obvious and blatant instances of a society that suspended the rights of certain segments of the population and subjected them to unspeakable, dehumanizing practices. A more recent example of a contemporary practice of exceptionalism noted by scholars and others is the U.S. prison for suspected terrorists in Guantanamo. I certainly do not wish to equate the contemporary situation in the United States with Germany of the 1930s and 1940s. Nor do I wish to compare the United States’ immigration situation to the situation in Guantanamo. These two cases are clearly examples of exceptionalism in a somewhat "pure" and blatant form and it could be argued that the contemporary situations faced by many undocumented migrants today are not comparable to these examples. However, this should not diminish the significance of the exceptionalism we witness in the United States today. Exceptionalism can work in less visibly spectacular ways and in a manner rather less severe than Nazi concentration camps or the imprisonment of several hundred uncharged individuals held in detention on the end of an island in the Caribbean.

The less extreme manifestations of exceptionalism should not be dismissed as unimportant. They can and do have devastating effects on the individuals and communities subjected to them. They raise important questions about the depth and breadth of our professed democratic values and about how we attribute worth to human beings with or without documents and citizenship.

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