The Invention of Illegal Immigration
How a U.S. policy change in 1965 proved disastrous for Mexican immigrants and migrant workers
If you depended on Donald Trump’s tweets to learn about our immigration issues, you’d get a tremendously skewed idea of how migration works in this country—and the historical path we’ve taken to get here.
Nonetheless, this much is true: Mexican migrant workers continue to enter the United States in significant numbers, hoping to find work here. In fact, in recent months, under the Trump presidency, the number of unauthorized immigrants crossing our Southern border has spiked. In February, some 66,450 immigrants were apprehended while crossing the border, an 11-year high, though illegal immigration numbers overall have been trending downward.
We can’t highlight that fact, however, without also acknowledging that many U.S. farms, ranches, orchards, restaurants, construction firms, landscaping companies, etc., actively seek to employ these migrants. We encourage them to come here. We arguably even need them to do this work.
Many may not realize, however, that the crude description of these migrants as “illegal immigrants” is a relatively recent phenomenon, especially in the context of our southern border. In fact, until one very specific year in our…
