Suchergebnisse

This paper evaluates the strategy for controlling "unwanted" immigration that has been implemented by the U.S. government since 1993, and suggests explanations for the failure of that strategy to achieve its stated objectives thus far. Available evidence suggests that a strategy of immigration control that overwhelmingly emphasizes border enforcement and short-changes interior (especially workplace) enforcement has caused illegal entries to be redistributed along the Southwest border; the financial cost of illegal entry has more than quadrupled; undocumented migrants are staying longer in the United States; migrant deaths resulting from clandestine border crossings have risen sharply; and there has been a surge in anti-immigrant vigilante activity. Consequences predicted by advocates of the concentrated border enforcement strategy have not yet materialized: There is no evidence that unauthorized migration is being deterred at the point of origin; that would-be illegal entrants are being discouraged at the border after multiple apprehensions by the Border Patrol and returning home; that their employment prospects in the U.S. have been curtailed; and that the resident population of undocumented immigrants is shrinking. It is argued that a severely constrained employer sanctions enforcement effort that has left demand for unauthorized immigrant labor intact is the fundamental reason why steadily escalating spending on border enforcement during the last ten years has had such a weak deterrent effect on unauthorized immigration to the United States. Reasons for the persistence of a failed immigration control policy are discussed, and alternatives to the current policy are evaluated.

This article assesses the efficacy of the strategy of immigration control implemented by the US government since 1993 in reducing illegal entry attempts, and documents some of the unintended consequences of this strategy, especially a sharp increase in mortality among unauthorized migrants along certain segments of the Mexico–US border. The available data suggest that the current strategy of border enforcement has resulted in rechanneling flows of unauthorized migrants to more hazardous areas, raising fees charged by people‐smugglers, and discouraging unauthorized migrants already in the US from returning to their places of origin. However, there is no evidence that the strategy is deterring or preventing significant numbers of new illegal entries, particularly given the absence of a serious effort to curtail employment of unauthorized migrants through worksite enforcement. An expanded temporary worker program, selective legalization of unauthorized Mexican workers residing in the United States, and other proposals under consideration by the US and Mexican governments are unlikely to reduce migrant deaths resulting from the current strategy of border enforcement.

This article argues that Mexico, after nearly seven decades of highly centralized, presidentialist rule, is moving toward a political system in which power is contested actively & continuously between center & periphery. State governors & other subnational political actors have become more assertive in national politics, & they have greater financial resources under their control, due to fiscal decentralization. Now operating in an increasingly competitive electoral environment, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has switched to a primary system for selecting its presidential candidate that inevitably rewards the state & local PRI machines that deliver the vote for the winning candidate. Under these circumstances, the very different subnational political regimes that coexist inside Mexico may function more as obstacle to the completion of the democratic transition than as breeding grounds for further democratizing advances, as the "periphery" is often viewed in the contemporary Mexican political literature. Drawing on evidence from five types of center-periphery confrontations during the presidency of Ernesto Zedillo, it is argued that the re-emergence in the 1990s of strong, subnational political regimes that are resistant to control by the President & other central political actors is likely to prolong Mexico's democratic transition & increase its unevenness. Adapted from the source document.

Assesses progress toward electoral and political reform under President Salinas de Gortari.