Alma M. García
Mexican immigrants will continue to make their journey north from Mexico to El Norte, a place of anticipated opportunities, but also a site of anti-immigration public opinion and periods of anti-immigrant public policy. Mexican immigrants bring with them cultural traditions while also adopting new ones as they navigate life in the United States and the immigrant communities within which they most frequently have lived for a period of time. Mexican immigrant women and men, along with their children, have confronted and, indeed contested inequality through social justice movements as the Immigrant Spring of 2006 and the DREAMers movement.
Nevertheless, lingering social problems and new and emerging issues pose challenges. A record of these serve as the basis for this new edition of McWilliams’s North from Mexico. These include, but are not limited to, the following: demographic changes of immigrants in the United States, rates of immigration from Mexico, policies on border security and deportations, experiences of women crossing the border, and trends and movements for social change.
Mexican immigration will always be fueled by social, political, and economic changes in Mexico and the United States. The U.S.-Mexico border will continue to be a fluid one that is crossed by immigrants and their children. Rates of both authorized and unauthorized immigration have remained stable over the past few years due to a slight improvement in the Mexican economy and, perhaps more importantly, the slowing down of the U.S. economy and the greater enforcement of the border leading to increased deportations.
Immigrants cross the border and find a combination of the American Dream and the American nightmare. With changes in the globalized economy in the United States, Mexicans have been coming and migrating to new destination states such as Georgia, Tennessee, and Vermont, where they have found work opportunities; however, communities in these states have had limited contact with Mexican immigrants, producing the potential for social conflict, including violence, directed at them. Mexicans, like other immigrants, often find themselves caught in a nexus of exploitation in the paid labor force, anti-immigrant hostilities, and limited access to higher education for their children. The demonization of immigrants has been transformed into anti-immigrant legislation such as the Immigration Act of 1990, state initiatives such as California’s Proposition 187, and challenges to birthright citizenship protection found in the Fourteenth Amendment.
In the decades after Carey McWilliams wrote North from Mexico and Matt Meier updated this classic book, Mexican immigrants, U.S.-born Mexicans, and their supporters from all walks of life have joined in collective activism to contest social injustices. Mexican women have been active in these struggles, particularly those that address specific hostilities against women, such as the sexual exploitation, even murders, of immigrant women who come to the border to work in maquiladoras, many of whom later cross the border at isolated and dangerous entry points. Mexican women have contested these conditions by forming grassroots organizations to combat sexual violence, including violence against lesbians. Undocumented students, most of whom have only known life in the United States, having arrived as very young children with their undocumented parents, have transformed themselves from marginalized individuals into organizers. For example, undocumented students have formed such collective organizations as United We Dream, an activist group aimed at providing unauthorized children—the DREAMers—with information on the DREAM Act and DACA as well as functioning as a political interest group that continues to lobby for the passage of the DREAM Act.
Unauthorized Mexican immigrants continue to face “demonization” as witnessed in deportation rates and enforcement practices of the Department of Homeland Security. Deportations increased under the Obama administration, and, as a result, his support among Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans, usually taken for granted, has become problematic. Immigration reform has continued to be stalled during President Barack Obama’s two presidential terms and a Republican Congress.
Though they still lag behind those of other groups, the voter registration and voter turnout rates for naturalized Mexicans and U.S.-born Mexican-Americans have continued to increase, particularly when political candidates seek the support of “the Latino vote.” Obama’s win in 2008 over John McCain and his reelection in 2012 over Mitt Romney revealed the importance of building outreach strategies to groups such as Mexicans-Americans, particularly first-time voters. Future presidential candidates as well as candidates for other offices will need to build innovative strategies to gain their support.
Mexican immigrants, their U.S.-born children, and later generations have had opportunities for upward mobility, albeit limited. Mexican-Americans continue to face issues such as obstacles to higher education, limited job opportunities with low wages and limited benefits, and, in general, ongoing prejudice and discrimination. Nevertheless, over the past twenty years, more Mexican-Americans are graduating from high school and are entering and completing college; a limited number are even continuing to postcollege education. In addition, Mexican immigrants have a long history as entrepreneurs who have started small “mom-and-pop stores” and restaurants, particularly in immigrant communities. More recently, the U.S. Census Bureau, particularly American Community Survey, has recorded a small increase in the number of midsize businesses among Mexicans and U.S.-born Mexicans, including high-tech industry startups in Silicon Valley. The number of Mexican-Americans in elected office has increased over the past twenty years. Some of these will most certainly become national figures, even presidential candidates. All of these developments point to a gradual upward mobility, one in which some children of Mexican immigrants are becoming better off than their immigrant parents.
Much work needs to be done to improve socioeconomic and political opportunities for Mexicans. Anti-immigrant sentiments, however, exist side by side with ones that welcome immigrants, support social reforms, and promote movements for social justice. As the historical and contemporary record shows, Mexicans in the United States have raised their voices in protest through mass mobilization and organization building. Indeed, echoes of César Chávez’s slogan of si se puede will be heard throughout Mexican and Mexican-American communities that continue to struggle for social justice.