Illegal immigration is one of the major challenges that the United States is facing, with an estimated number of eleven million undocumented immigrants in the country (Flores and Schachter, 2018). The issue of illegal immigrants has sparked debates in political, social, religious, and academic circles in the recent past partly because of the differences in the socio-political and legal construction of illegal immigration. But who are the illegal immigrants? Essentially, illegal immigrants are people who have migrated to the United States in contravention of immigration laws and therefore do not have the legal right to live in the country. Immigration laws define illegal immigrants simply as undocumented immigrants or any foreign-born nationals without a valid US visa or who entered the country without proper inspection. Nevertheless, illegality is socially constructed by immigration laws and stereotypes associated with members of a particular national origin, ethnic background, occupation, and level of education, among others. The extant legal framework does not clearly and adequately define illegal immigration hence emboldening social perspectives on the issue. This paper examines how immigration laws, stereotypes, and prejudice attitudes have socially constructed illegal immigration.
Immigration statuses in the US are ambiguous and too complex for the average American to understand because the legality is socially constructed. Media, political, and cultural messages continue to profile certain individuals or their ethnic communities as “illegal immigrants.” For instance, the media peddles the misconception that Latino Americans are unwilling to be socialized into the mainstream American ways of life and are prone to ills such as crime, drug and substance abuse, abusive of education and medical care, among others. Essentially, Latino ethnicity triggers suspicions of illegality both in the community and among law enforcers because of the messages that the media feeds the public (Flores and Schachter, 2018). As a result, many Latino Americans prefer to live in neighborhoods dominated by African Americans and Hispanics where they tend to blend more easily as opposed to regions dominated majority by Native Americans. They do so to reduce these suspicions of illegality.
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The illegal immigrant in the US society is also defined by their national origin, where factors such as skin color, eye color, and hair texture play a major role in creating these distinctions. The vast majority of Americans are whites, and therefore, individuals of different races could easily be labeled as illegal immigrants because they are the minority. Discrimination based on national origin continues to define illegal immigrants because the person’s sense of majority groups is still built on their belonging to the dominant group or race. The scenario supports the social identity theory, which posits that in a society where the individual sense of belonging enhances self-image, in-group members will easily discriminate out-group members (Mangum and Rock, 2018). The perceived superiority of the white race and its significance in the self-image of white Americans contributes to the identification of other races or people with different national origins as illegal immigrants. Since the bulk of illegal immigrants come from Mexico, immigrants of Asian and African descent suffer less from suspicions of illegality compared to their Latino counterparts.
Additionally, the illegal immigrant is created by the use or abuse of government benefits such as welfare. Government benefits are deemed to be magnets for immigrants and have, therefore, contributed to the cementing of the concept of illegality. In essence, these benefits are given to people with no income, no access to medical insurance or individuals who are unable to afford education; hence, social benefits are markers of illegality in contemporary American society. Politically, illegal immigrants are also constructed around criminality in American society. For instance, during the 2016 presidential campaign, candidate Donald Trump accused Mexican immigrants of being criminals, drug traffickers, and rapists, a statement that received global media attention and cemented the stereotypes against Latino Americans and criminality as a marker of illegal immigrants (Flores and Schachter, 2018). The implications of the construction of illegality on criminality include wrongful convictions and incarcerations of Latino Americans in the US because of suspicions of criminal liability. The media also continues to exacerbate the situation by portraying a direct connection between illegal immigrants and violent crime. This has undermined the integration of Latino Americans and other immigrants into American society.
Another trait that shapes the construction of illegality is occupation. Many illegal immigrants in the US are reported to work in the service industry and engaged in low-status occupational activities because they do not have adequate skills. Consequently, workers in the service industry of different national origin are often vilified on suspicion of being illegal immigrants (Flores and Schachter, 2018). There are cases where Mexican gardeners working in the leafy suburbs of California try to blend in the society by wearing clothes worn by middle class or buying better cars so that they do not appear illegal. Immigrants working in the service industry, particularly low-income jobs, grapple with the challenge of constant stereotyping and segregation because occupation is a key marker of illegality in the country. Culturally, fluency in the English language is also a marker of illegality and shapes the definition of illegal immigrants in the US. Immigrants are associated with less proficiency in the language because it implies that they have lived in the US for only a short period. Moreover, English fluency is also a marker of education level in the US, and since immigrants are not as educated as the natives, lower education levels are often misconstrued for “illegality” (Flores and Schachter, 2018). People with little understanding of English and education level of less than high school education are often stereotyped as illegal immigrants. As a result, many immigrants try to improve their fluency in the language to communicate as natives and blend in.
The continued increase in the number of illegal immigrants in the US has increased calls for the American public to report immigrants to anonymous police hotlines whenever they suspect them. Flores and Schachter (2018) posit that these calls have magnified the wrongful construction of illegal immigrants since most people base on factors such as ethnic origin, race, occupation, and level of education but not on the law. Since immigration laws define illegal immigrants as undocumented immigrants, it is difficult for the public to make the distinction between documented and undocumented ones by merely looking at them. For instance, two individuals of Mexican descent could both be labeled as illegal immigrants in the American society simply because of their Mexican ancestry even though one of them could have valid documents of residence in the US. Such cases imply that immigration laws are vague and do not clearly define illegal immigrants. Research has shown that majority of Americans are more willing and ready to report Latino Americans than Asians or African Americans as illegal immigrants because of the cemented causality between nationality, criminality, and fluency of English and illegality. It was also revealed that having a criminal record was a strong marker of illegality because most criminal activities are associated with minority groups in American society. The findings portray a society where Mexican descent is a strong marker of illegality. This notion has been cemented in the media and political circles. For instance, President Donald Trump’s resolve to build the US-Mexico border wall has strengthened the perception that Mexican-Americans are illegal immigrants who are prone to criminal activities and abuse of government benefits or social services. In a nutshell, possession of traits described above is the common criteria that people use to report illegal immigrants in the US, indicating the ambiguity in the definition of the illegal immigrant status. Whereas the US has laws and regulations on immigration, the complexities and ambiguities in these laws have allowed social restrictionists to advance stereotypes and re-construct the concept of illegal immigrants from socio-political perspectives (Flores and Schachter, 2018). There is a need for the nation to pursue strategies that will avert these social inequalities and embolden the law to be the sole construct of illegality.
In conclusion, ambiguities and complexities in the US immigration legal framework have given room for stereotypes and definition of illegality from social, cultural, and political perspectives. Suspicions of illegality in contemporary American society are hardly based on the law but rather traits constructed by society. Ethnicity is the commonest trait where individuals of Mexican descent or Latino Americans are vilified and stereotyped as illegal immigrants because most of the immigrants in the US originate from Mexico. Illegality is also constructed from criminality because illegal immigrants are associated with petty and violent crime, and therefore, those found committing crimes are often suspected to be illegal immigrants. Additionally, illegal immigrants are associated with working in the service industry and doing low-income jobs. Hence, individuals in the sector and with low-paying jobs are frequent victims of suspicions of illegality. Moreover, fluency of English is a determinant of the length of stay in the US and thus a marker of illegality. Individuals with low education levels are stereotyped to be illegal immigrants because less than a high school education level is often associated with illegal immigrants. Ultimately, there is a need to end these social inequalities and build a cohesive American society where illegality is only defined from the legal perspective.
References
Flores, R. D., & Schachter, A. (2018). Who are the “Illegals”? The Social Construction of Illegality in the United States. American Sociological Review, 83(5), 839– 868. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122418794635
Mangum, M., & Block, R. (2018). Social Identity Theory and Public Opinion towards Immigration. Social Sciences, 7 (3), 41. doi:10.3390/socsci7030041
