The Legal Production of Mexican/Migrant “Illegality”

Mexican migration to the United States is distinguished by a seeming paradox that is seldom examined: while no other country has supplied nearly as many migrants to the US as Mexico, major changes in US immigration law since 1965 have created ever more severe restrictions on “legal” migration from Mexico in particular.  On the one hand, apparently liberalizing immigration lawsImmigration laws have in fact concealed significantly restrictive features, especially for Mexicans; on the other hand, ostensibly restrictive immigration lawsImmigration laws purportedly intended to deter migration have nonetheless been instrumental in sustaining Mexican migration, but only by significantly restructuring its legal status as undocumented. Beginning in the 1960s, precisely when Mexican migration escalated dramatically—and ever since—persistent revisions in the law have effectively foreclosed the viable possibilities for the great majority who would migrate from Mexico to do so in accord with the law, and thus played an instrumental role in the production of a legally vulnerable undocumented workforce of “illegal aliens.”