Political Mobilization of Latino Immigrants in American Cities and the U.S. Immigration Debate

This paper analyses the mobilization actions among Latino populations in the United States, especially Mexican immigrants, triggered by the passage of H.R. 4437 by the U.S. House of Representatives on December 16, 2005. I expose the actors, their rationale, and mechanisms of mobilization that have raised to a historical proportion the current U.S. immigration debate. From a macro perspective, this work suggests that mobilization actions can be explained mainly through the involvement of the Catholic Church and/or immigrant-supportive organizations in 32 cities across the nation. From a micro perspective, this research suggests that faith, work and family are the triggering factors for Latinos and Latino immigrants to participate in political mobilizations of this type. Research for this paper is based on two major sources: (1) “U.S. Immigration Debate: Core Documents,” which includes more than 200 electronic links to documents related to the current U.S. immigration debate, and can be consulted in the website of the Mexico-North Research Network (www.mexnor.org); and (2) the “Mexico-North Collection on the U.S. Immigration Debate,” which includes more than 900 articles from U.S. and Mexican newspapers, magazines and electronic newsletters about the immigration debate for the period January 2005 – July 2006. The author would like to knowledge the support of the Department of Political Science at the University of Nebraska at Omaha for the research in this work. Partial funding for this work was provided by the Office of Latino and Latin American Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha/U.S. Department of Education. G. Cano, August 2006, gcano@mail.unomaha.edu Political Mobilization of Mexican Immigrants in American Cities and the U.S. Immigration Debate By Gustavo Cano Mexico-North Research Network, Washington D.C. and the University of Nebraska at Omaha “I want my children to know their mother is not a criminal. I want them to be as strong I am. This shows our strength.” Benita Olmedo, a nanny who came to the U.S. illegally in 1986 from Mexico, participating in an immigrant rights rally with her two children, 7 and 11 years old, in the city of San Francisco on May 1, 2006 ABC News: Immigrants Walk Off the Job in Boycott, May 1, 2006 “You should send all of the 13 million aliens home, then you take all of the welfare recipients who are taking a free check and make them do those jobs. It’s as simple as that.” Jack Culberson, a retired Army colonel and a counter-protester in Pensacola, Florida on May 1, 2006 ABC News: Immigrants Walk Off the Job in Boycott, May 1, 2006 On December 16, 2005, the United States House of Representatives passed the bill H.R. 4437 titled “Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005.” This bill makes illegal presence in the United States (U.S.) a felony. The bill also requires the department of Homeland Security to construct a double security fence across several portions of the Mexican border; encourages local police to enforce immigration law; makes it a felony “to assist, encourage, direct, or induce to enter or remain in the country with knowing or reckless disregard” of the fact that immigrants reside in the country illegally; and imposes a maximum fine of forty thousand dollars per undocumented worker that an employer hires or that an agency helps to find work. Currently, between 11 and 12 million unauthorized immigrants are estimated to live on U.S. soil. About fifty six percent of Latino unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. are of Mexican origin. This legislative action triggered the mobilization of millions of persons across the U.S. in the first half of 2006. The first major rally against H.R. 4437 took place in the city of Chicago, where a number between 100,000 and 300,000 individuals took to the streets on March 10, 2006. For the period March 11-April 7 the rallies expanded to 76 cities with an 1 “Size and Characteristics of the Unauthorized Migrant Population in the U.S. Estimates Based on the March 2005 Current Population Survey” by Jeffrey S. Passel, Pew Hispanic Center, March 2006. http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/61.pdf