Immigration, economy and politics

In the 1930s, a dark underside of the squalid hopelessness of the Great Depression included mass deportation of Mexican nationals and Mexican American citizens from the Southwest.

During the recession of the early 1990s, California voters, in a whirlwind of anti-immigrant backlash, approved anti-immigration legislation.

History has a fairly consistent arc in developed nations: In times of economic languor, immigrant groups tend to come under fire.

As the economy sinks into what may be prolonged recession and the labor market slackens, already strong currents of anti-immigrant sentiment may become bigger, say activists and academics.

History underscores the tendency toward stiffening enforcement of anti-immigrant laws and popular uproar, and political shifts from the presidential to the local level may portend the latest edition of the transformation from America the welcome beacon to a land hostile to border breaching immigrants seeking shriveling economic opportunity.

But a countervailing and equally familiar dynamic may also be at work, and possibly serve to blunt the backlash against noncitizens this time around: Years of assimilation and voter registration have made second and third generation immigrants a viable political force.

"As the economy worsens, history has shown a very strong tendency toward scapegoating immigrant groups,” said Jose Zapata Calderon, a professor of sociology and Chicano studies at Pitzer College in Claremont. “And you can see it beginning to take place on an international level right now.”

The new dynamic has already been felt, most notably in mass demonstrations and effective voter drives in response to proposed immigration legislation in recent years.

At the same time, the economic slowdown and fear of terrorism have fused with concerns about a porous southern border seen increasingly as a gateway not only for illegal immigrants but also terrorists, said Armando Navarro, an ethnic studies professor at UC Riverside and coordinator of the National Alliance for Human Rights.

The result, he says, is a popular backlash that’s leading immigrants to flee back to their homelands.

"We have legislation at local and state level that is proliferating, especially in Arizona, that is causing people to ... return to Mexico," Navarro said.

Signs of stiffening enforcement of federal immigration laws and immigrant flight are already apparent in Arizona, home to some of the country’s toughest laws against employers who hire illegal immigrants.

Scott Zentner, a Cal State San Bernardino political science professor, said popular backlash, a slumping economy and pervasive fear of terrorism have blended to force a transformative impact on American politics.

“Clearly, leaders have to respond to this situation, especially after 9/11,” Zentner said. “I think it's true that the Democrats have been pulled somewhat to the right on border control in recent years, because the issue has been percolating and is now flaring up.”

At day, labor centers throughout the area, fear of terrorism isn’t the issue. The dominant concern is that work is scarce and wages are lean.

Particularly exacting on the pool of immigrant labor is the housing market collapse. As foreclosures skyrocket and homeowners watch their assets plummet in value, housing-supply retailers like Home Depot and Lowe’s Cos. — and the day laborers who often congregate around them — feel the impact.

Pastor David Kalke, who heads a San Bernardino Lutheran mission renowned for its bilingual worship and outreach to Latino immigrants, recently began setting up assistance booths at day-labor centers to aid laborers.

At a local Home Depot last month, church leaders befriended laborers who complained of scant work, Kalke said.

“They’re talking about the difficulty in getting employment, which has worsened because of the downturn in the construction,” Kalke said.

Church leaders offered the laborers snacks and information about local resources. Kalke said a free community clinic the church runs has seen visits increase in recent months from five to 30 patients daily, many of them Spanish-only speakers.

“Life is difficult for them right now,” he said.

Last month, anti-illegal-immigration activists appeared at a Pomona City Council meeting to demand closure of the city’s day-labor center, a scenario that immigrant activists fear will play out with increasing regularity as the economy worsens.

But a counterforce may be at work today, beating back the historical tide against immigrants in times of economic scarcity: Latinos have reached historic heights in terms of both proportion of the U.S. population and political clout.

No longer the seldom-seen minority group whose interests didn’t blip on politicians’ radar, the Latino vote is the fastest growing in the country and increasingly commands political action.

“These are communities that are galvanized by the anti-immigration movements,” Calderon said. “It has led to huge marches and steady citizenship and voter registration drives, things that didn’t happen during prior periods of immigrant targeting.”

Calderon said fear of mass crackdowns on illegal immigrants fueled more than a million to flood the backlog for citizenship applications last year.

“There is something new happening this time, something that can develop into a new kind of coalition,” Calderon said.

But regardless of Latinos’ strength as an interest group, Americans as a whole are facing a potentially grim period that could sharpen backlash against all immigrants.

The economy, immigration, crime and now state and local budget crises are likely to ensure further deterioration of public services, Health care, public education, and other taxpayer-funded goods offer fertile ground for anti-illegal immigration activists seeking to tie the decline in their quantity and quality to the proliferation of illegal immigration.

Americans rank these as top issues; studies are mixed on immigration’s overall effect on public services, but if a decline in services becomes further equated with illegal immigration, it could push Democrats farther to the right, some say, regardless of how overwhelmingly Latinos and new immigrants identify with the party.

National polls have consistently shown Americans to be dissatisfied with the flow of illegal immigration throughout the decade. A CNN Poll taken in January showed two-thirds of respondents wanted illegal immigration curtailed, and only 5 percent wanting the number of undocumented in the country to increase. A closely watched NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll in December found 52 percent of Americans believed “(any) immigration hurts the United States more than it helps it,” compared to only 39 percent saying immigration “helps” the country.

The current climate has also fed renewed antipathy toward the North American Free Trade Agreement, which seems to many Americans to have swallowed jobs and wages to the benefit of multinational corporations.

Far from the overwhelming Democratic support it enjoyed when it was passed in the 1990s, now Democratic frontrunners Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton labor to explain their qualms with the policy’s mixed economic record, sometimes openly criticizing it.

“I’m not a protectionist, but there are issues with these trade agreements that have to be resolved,” Calderon said. “A lot of immigrants would not be here if there were jobs in their hometowns. The fact is that they cross the border because they need to find employment, and our trade agreements need to do a better job of ensuring that work is there, work that is not exploitive.”

Calderon and others can only use history as a guide to speculate how immigration, economic turmoil and acute insecurity will play out. Some feel the backlash, fueled by economic decline and an ongoing war on terror, will be blunted by the newfound political clout of Latinos and the country’s mood of youthful, civic engagement.

Others, like Navarro, fear that passions will be fanned by the swirling winds of terror, economic decay and continued pressures on public services at state and local levels to generate a storm of backlash against immigrants similar in some ways to darker periods of American history.

“Something changed after 9/11,” Navarro said. “The war, and terror, added something new to the backlash against immigration.”