FOUR. Manufacturing Crisis and Fomenting Fear at the Dawn of the Age of Mass Expulsion

Abstract

This chapter explains how the United States' ongoing demand for cheap migrant labor normalized the deportation machine at the border and in the interior. It talks about the Immigration and Naturalization Service's increasing dependence on voluntary departures and immigration raids between 1965 and 1985 that made the possibility of deportation an everyday reality for undocumented immigrants. It also describes the pattern of circular, undocumented Mexican migration that emerged as a relatively open and benign labor process with few negative consequences. The chapter reveals how bureaucratic practices, changes in law, and combination of political, economic, social, and cultural factors demonized ethnic Mexicans and solidified the stereotype of them as prototypical “illegal aliens”. It also highlights the changes in the policy and political economies of the United States and Mexico from 1965 to 1985 that resulted in significant transformations to the deportation machine.