Guest Workers or Invaders? The Conservative Division Over U.S. Immigration Policy: The Reinforcement of National Borders and the Racialization of Latino Migrants.

The Modern Anti-Immigrant Movement has evolved over the last 25 years, responding to changes in US immigration policy, shifting demographics, the re-structuring of the world-economy, and to challenges to the perceived well-being of hegemonic American identity along the lines of culture, race, language, and other social formations. The peak of the Modern Anti-Immigrant Movement (so far) came in the mid-1990?s with the passage of California?s Proposition 187. Southern California emerged at that time as a hotbed for grassroots anti-immigrant activism. Today, Southern California continues to be an anti-immigrant hotbed, but the activists ally themselves more than ever with likeminded groups, pundits and politicians nationwide. President Bush?s proposal on January 7, 2004 for amnesty and a guest worker program spiked the anti-immigrant movement once again. Interviews with 28 leading anti-immigrant activists in California, attendance at several anti-immigrant conferences in Washington, DC and New York, and a review of related ephemera, reveal a strong division between conservatives on the issue of immigration. One side is pro-immigration, the other is anti-immigration; however, both are anti-immigrant. Moreover, ethnographic fieldwork on migrant-sending communities in Mexico and El Salvador, combined with this U.S.-based research reveals that both stances reinforce national borders and the racialization of Latino migrants, especially Mexicans, to the benefit of the international division of labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]