Congress, Immigration Enforcement, and the Construction of State Power

• In Event: Structuring Migration, Mobility, and Citizenship

Abstract

In the late 19th century, a series of landmark Supreme Court rulings gave Congress plenary power over the entry of nonnationals to the country. Ever since, distinctive features of Congress have shaped the building and deployment of state power in matters of border security and immigration enforcement. While it is well-known that Congress’s porousness to organized interests and lugubrious decision-making process have often led to lax enforcement policies – serving the interests of employers for cheap labor, for example – Congress has, at times, enacted fierce crackdowns on migrants and asylum-seekers, targeting especially those seeking entry across U.S. borders and nonnationals judged as deficient or threatening, such as those convicted of criminal acts. This paper reviews historical patterns of border control and immigration enforcement to theorize Congress as a statebuilding power. Features of Congress – the rootedness of its members in state and local politics, frequency of elections, and permeability to interest groups – explain the growth of state power in this domain, and the forms that it would take. Congress regularly has proved unable to address the root causes of migration, such as labor market demand, and its members have therefore sought other ways to display their hardline bona fides when it comes to immigration enforcement and border control. Rather than construct an enforcement apparatus that would impose costs on employers or legal workers – all of whom would vigorously resist such measures – members of Congress have trained their sights on those that had few champions in U.S. politics – migrants seeking entry at the border and non-nationals convicted of crimes. The resulting border control and immigration enforcement apparatus illustrates how features of Congress shape the building and deployment of state power in the U.S., resulting in a peculiar mix of incapacity and ferocity.

Author

• Kimberly J. Morgan, George Washington University