Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

Guys, the Border Already Is Secure

May 3, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
border-fence

U.S. immigration reform has hinged on first “securing the border,” which has that sort of common sense appeal of not fixing water damage after a pipe bursts until you repair the leaky pipe. Politicians from former presidential contenders to D.C. legislators to local sheriffs all insist that the border needs to be fixed before we can talk about legalizing existing illegal immigrants or making other changes to immigration policy. This week, Senator Marco Rubio, a member of the “gang of eight” working on drafting an immigration bill, repeated the mantra that there will be no bill ... Read More

More like this: Politics
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It Gets Better, Y’all

April 8, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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A man in a cowboy hat stands in a field, next to a tractor, guitar in hand. The hat is white and the man is white and the tractor is red. This is the music video for one of the most popular songs in America right now, a song that name-checks Billy Graham, sweet tea, NASCAR, and biscuits with gravy. For good measure, the hit single also quotes generously from "Dixie," the unofficial Confederate anthem once performed by blackface minstrels, in which a freed slave sings longingly about the plantation of his birth. For pop-country listeners, this song has been on heavy rotation during a ... Read More

More like this: Culture, May-June 2013
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Happy(ish) World Veil Day

September 4, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
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It's International Hijab Day. The event began in 2004 to protest the French government's ban on wearing the Muslim headscarf in public schools. It gained momentum in 2009 after the Marwa el Sherbini case in Germany. Sherbini, an Egyptian living in Dresden, was murdered inside a courtroom while testifying against Alex Wiens, a Russian also living in Germany, who had insulted Sherbini for wearing the veil. Wiens, who had smuggled a knife into the trial, crossed the courtroom and stabbed Sherbini 16 times. Sherbini's husband was then mistaken for the assailant, and a police officer shot him as ... Read More

More like this: The 101, Uncategorized
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UK Study of Racial Discrimination Curiously Racial

August 22, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

A study of bias in immigration policy by researchers at the UK's Bristol University concludes that treatment of immigrants by the British visa system and the British media "exhibits features of institutionalized racism that implicitly invokes shared whiteness as a basis of racialized inclusion." If true—that whites have an easier time applying for UK residence than anyone else does, and newspapers treat immigrants as ethnically distinct—that's important, but less-than-shocking news. From there however, things get odd. A useful summary at phys.org, which reported the study, ... Read More

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When Seeking US Political Asylum, Apply in Bhutan

August 16, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
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With Olympic athletes trying to get in to the UK, and Julian Assange trying to slip out, one might ask "how hard is it to get political asylum these days?" US and EU immigration statistics suggest several hundred thousand people receive visas based on political considerations each year. Here are the most recent numbers for the European Union, where France gets the most applications for asylum status most years. According to the EU's number crunching service, Eurostat, just over a quarter million people received visas to live in the common market's countries last year, with the largest ... Read More

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China’s Urban Immigrants: A Diet of Bitterness

April 20, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Westerners visiting China for the first time often seem surprised at the country’s relative lack of poverty. Chinese cities do not have beggar populations on the scale of India’s, nor are conditions in their shantytowns as dire as those in the favelas of Brazil. While the country’s much-touted economic growth has clearly not been distributed equally, a quick visit to any Chinese metropolis leaves the impression that poverty is less of a concern there than in many other places around the world. But venturing into the countryside, particularly in China’s west, reveals a different ... Read More

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Why Mexican Immigrants Can’t Get Ahead

December 22, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

An annual Christmas pilgrimage used to see perhaps millions of Mexican immigrants, documented or not, return to Mexico from the U.S. for the holidays. But that flow has slowed as the U.S. militarizes its southern border and violence back home reduces the motherland's charms. But the economic charms of working in the U.S. are paling, too. Among the so-called 99 percent of people in the United States who have not shared in the rising prosperity of recent decades, Mexican immigrants have fared worse than most. While the real wages of other groups have remained fairly stagnant since 1970, ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics
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Viewing Illegal Immigration Through Desert Debris

November 1, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

We don’t see or hear the border patrol agents until they’re almost on top of us. There are two of them, both white; one older and wiry, the other young and beefy. They are dressed in olive drab uniforms. The wiry one gives our little group of four the once-over. “We thought we might get some action today,” he says, “but you guys look all right.” He sounds just a touch disappointed. “What are you all up to?” the beefy one asks. “We’re out for a hike,” says Jason De León. De León, 34, is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan and the ... Read More

More like this: Culture, November-December 2011, Profile
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Report: U.S.-Mexico Border More Secure Than Ever

August 16, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Peak and FY 2010 border apprehensions, by border sector

The common political debate over how the United States needs to "secure its borders" — particularly ahead of any negotiation over immigration reform — implies, of course, that the country's borders aren't all that secure. Increasingly desperate state laws attempting to curb illegal immigration reinforce the notion, as have highly publicized individual incidents, both real and imagined. In addition, as drug violence has escalated along the Mexican side of the border, it's easy to see why concerned U.S. residents would make the cognitive step from the reality of rising violence in Mexico ... Read More

More like this: Politics, The Idea Lobby
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On Immigration Polls, a Lot of People Lie

June 5, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

A Gallup survey taken last year found 45 percent believe immigration in the United States should be decreased, compared to 17 percent saying it should be increased and 34 percent saying it should be kept at present levels. But should such figures be taken at face value? University of California, Berkeley, sociologist Alexander Janus argues not. Using a polling technique designed to uncover hidden bias, he concluded about 61 percent of Americans support a cutoff of immigration. Janus, who published his findings in the journal Social Science Quarterly, argues that "social desirability pressures" ... Read More

More like this: Findings, NEWS, Politics
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