Neoliberal Immigration Policy
Across time and varying ethnic groups, the same basic tenants have justified socioeconomic stratification, white fear-mongering and supremacy, and violence against bodies of color, reified every few generations to continually conceal and perpetuate the capital interests of the state: adherence to traditional, cisheteropatriarchal family values; personal responsibility as performed through economic self-sufficiency; the subtle positioning of one disenfranchised group against another, to the end of whitewashing and subjugating both. The nature of these systems can be most thoroughly parsed through an examination of two texts in conjunction. Eithne Luibhéid surveys in Entry Denied: A History of U.S. Immigration Control the neoliberal immigration
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cycle across time, from Chinese exclusion to white ethnic revival to contemporary Latinx “crimmigration,” making the point that, blind to which groups draw the short straw, the cycle itself is repetitive and perpetual. These processes are cyclical, recurring, and predictable, enacted by and through bodies both invested and impacted, enforcing and concealing themselves as the order of the given day demands; indifferent to the passage of time, their justifications hinge each time on the same basic fears. Leah Perry breaks down in The Cultural Politics of U.S. Immigration the hallmarks of that cycle, including what makes their production and reproduction effective, by looking through the lens of its most modern incarnation – the Latinx “immigration emergency.” I argue that, with a comprehensive look at the parallels and overlaps between these two texts as well as occasional input from additional scholars, a highly adaptive gendered and racialized rubric for the subjugation of immigrant populations is revealed, one which has been serving as the primary shaping force with respect to both culture and relevant legislation for nearly one hundred and fifty years. Particularly, neoliberal crossings have weaponized disenfranchised bodies against one another in subtle but violent ways, cycling those groups through different relational positions with one another over the course of time. This work examines this phenomenon through the lens of the aforementioned texts. White supremacy has always called for blood. Like capitalism, its sister, it does not just demand but goes so far as to fully embody arbitrary social stratification based on factors including race, sex, gender, and ability. Both lavish the wealthy at the expense of the deviant and the poor, and both, for the sake of self-preservation, must operate in the shadows, using cloaked and ostensibly neutral or irrelevant language to do their work. Neoliberal objectives and intentions can be parsed through an analysis of the cultural norms promoted by neoliberal institutions, and, as Perry argues, these are most saliently expressed through the social capital system that has been set up to dispense authority and social standing based on adherence to the ideal – the personally responsible, financially independent, able-bodied, heterosexual cisgender white man. In the eyes of the state, Perry postulates, “who counts as human is narrowly defined as a self-supporting member of a heterosexual family” (83). Any deviation from that strict profile – one composed, notably, of arbitrary and largely uncontrollable characteristics – results in dehumanization and, consequently, in punishment from the state and the community alike, to degrees proportionate to the extremity of the deviation(s), and is perpetuated by the fact that the state clandestinely profits from those acts of punishment (Perry, 138). What this modus operandi ultimately produced beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century was, first, the criminalization and exclusion of Chinese people. With its first formal, broadly-stroked immigration legislation, the Page Law of 1875 and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (Luibhéid 2), the United States kicked off an intense manhunt for a foreign scapegoat upon which to pin fault for labor shortages, welfare inflation, rising crime rates, and challenges to patriotism and white nationalism, to name a few, which is ongoing today and through which, whirlwind-style, minority ethnic groups have been violently cycled and variably positioned.
The story of the United States’ relationship with Chinese immigrants is of particular note regarding the weaponization of bodies of color against one another. These first significant pieces of legislation regarding immigration in the history of the nation, mentioned above, placed increasing restrictions on the kinds of people allowed to emigrate from China. Perry details at various points throughout her text how the basic tenants of neoliberal crossings manifested themselves with respect to this population: Chinese men were viewed as direct competition for labor as westward expansion accelerated with the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad; how women’s sexuality was policed more and more stringently, with legal provisions going as far as excluding non-married non-virgins on counts of prostitution, effectively tying women to men legally and financially; how spaces and activities stereotypically associated with Chinese communities were criminalized to provide rationale for extreme state backlash, with the opium den being a notable example. Because of what was initially meant as a temporary ban, for 61 years, nearly every Chinese national was barred from legally entering the United States (Luibhéid, 18). In a striking and nearly overnight 180, travel sanctions against the Chinese were lifted in 1943 following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the United States’ successive entry into World War II, and the subsequent white terror that followed. Chinese Americans, immigrants and citizens alike (for one of Perry’s most poignant points is that social perception of immigrants is inherently homogenizing; all Mexican people, for example, become “illegal aliens,” which serves to racially criminalize an entire body of people indiscriminately, making harsh punitive measures “commonsense” (Perry)), found their social standing suddenly and unexpectedly elevated by the very same state that had denigrated them for so long, cast as the positive complement to the newly seized upon target of the Japanese by an anxious white population eager to participate in what Perry calls “racial taxonomy” (Perry 170). In the post-war years, pale-skinned Asian populations became conflated in the white mind, homogenizing a significant proportion of people from central and western Asia and recasting them socially once again, this time as the “model minority” in contrast with darker skinned black and brown people, positioned as an “intermediary control stratum” between the idealized white body and the criminalized black body (Perry, 118) – in a middle man, if you will, designed to simultaneously prop up through inherent foreign-ness their white counterparts and serve as an example for their brown and black ones.
Beginning at a different point in the cycle and in space and time, but moving through it with striking parallels, is the story of America’s white ethnic populations.
Initially cast concurrently as exploitable laborers and as morally corrupt scapegoats for the social ills of the day, much like the Chinese before them and the Mexicans yet to come, immigrants from southern and eastern Europe were also remolded in the aftermath of WWII, notably as the civil rights movement took shape; the general social perception regarding people of Italian, Irish, Polish, Jewish, etc. descent shifted from one about criminality, deviance, and congenital racial inferiority to nearly the opposite as white neoliberal projects worked to suppress black power and intellect and to reformulate themselves under a new post-war sociopolitical order. Where for years white ethnics had been viewed by nativists “as racially inferior, fecund burdens on the state” (Perry, 101), they were “whitened” in the process of black subjugation (Pedraza 36-39), and the illusion of successful bootstrap-pulling was created regarding these people in such a way that suggested a demonstrably false premise of equality (Perry, 74). By manipulating the circumstances that create social stratification, including but not limited to targeted legislation and public rhetoric, neoliberal agendas once again effectively weaponized a group of people once subjugated themselves, violently erasing their ethnic and cultural underpinnings in a chilling effort to homogenize the white front against those people it considers its negations. Importantly, in ostensibly contradicting itself by allowing (even creating) such an apparently substantial paradigm shift, the system effectively refreshed its camouflage once again without updating any of its fundamental tenants, especially those of personal responsibility and adherence to family values. This allows for the ongoing reification of the process, which is constantly reconstructing
itself in accordance with the day and age. The parallels between the previous example of the status elevation of Asian people in direct response to racialized and gendered sociopolitical pressures of the day are undeniable; it’s always the same con artist underneath a revolving door of disguises.
cycle across time, from Chinese exclusion to white ethnic revival to contemporary Latinx “crimmigration,” making the point that, blind to which groups draw the short straw, the cycle itself is repetitive and perpetual. These processes are cyclical, recurring, and predictable, enacted by and through bodies both invested and impacted, enforcing and concealing themselves as the order of the given day demands; indifferent to the passage of time, their justifications hinge each time on the same basic fears. Leah Perry breaks down in The Cultural Politics of U.S. Immigration the hallmarks of that cycle, including what makes their production and reproduction effective, by looking through the lens of its most modern incarnation – the Latinx “immigration emergency.” I argue that, with a comprehensive look at the parallels and overlaps between these two texts as well as occasional input from additional scholars, a highly adaptive gendered and racialized rubric for the subjugation of immigrant populations is revealed, one which has been serving as the primary shaping force with respect to both culture and relevant legislation for nearly one hundred and fifty years. Particularly, neoliberal crossings have weaponized disenfranchised bodies against one another in subtle but violent ways, cycling those groups through different relational positions with one another over the course of time. This work examines this phenomenon through the lens of the aforementioned texts. White supremacy has always called for blood. Like capitalism, its sister, it does not just demand but goes so far as to fully embody arbitrary social stratification based on factors including race, sex, gender, and ability. Both lavish the wealthy at the expense of the deviant and the poor, and both, for the sake of self-preservation, must operate in the shadows, using cloaked and ostensibly neutral or irrelevant language to do their work. Neoliberal objectives and intentions can be parsed through an analysis of the cultural norms promoted by neoliberal institutions, and, as Perry argues, these are most saliently expressed through the social capital system that has been set up to dispense authority and social standing based on adherence to the ideal – the personally responsible, financially independent, able-bodied, heterosexual cisgender white man. In the eyes of the state, Perry postulates, “who counts as human is narrowly defined as a self-supporting member of a heterosexual family” (83). Any deviation from that strict profile – one composed, notably, of arbitrary and largely uncontrollable characteristics – results in dehumanization and, consequently, in punishment from the state and the community alike, to degrees proportionate to the extremity of the deviation(s), and is perpetuated by the fact that the state clandestinely profits from those acts of punishment (Perry, 138). What this modus operandi ultimately produced beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century was, first, the criminalization and exclusion of Chinese people. With its first formal, broadly-stroked immigration legislation, the Page Law of 1875 and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (Luibhéid 2), the United States kicked off an intense manhunt for a foreign scapegoat upon which to pin fault for labor shortages, welfare inflation, rising crime rates, and challenges to patriotism and white nationalism, to name a few, which is ongoing today and through which, whirlwind-style, minority ethnic groups have been violently cycled and variably positioned.
The story of the United States’ relationship with Chinese immigrants is of particular note regarding the weaponization of bodies of color against one another. These first significant pieces of legislation regarding immigration in the history of the nation, mentioned above, placed increasing restrictions on the kinds of people allowed to emigrate from China. Perry details at various points throughout her text how the basic tenants of neoliberal crossings manifested themselves with respect to this population: Chinese men were viewed as direct competition for labor as westward expansion accelerated with the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad; how women’s sexuality was policed more and more stringently, with legal provisions going as far as excluding non-married non-virgins on counts of prostitution, effectively tying women to men legally and financially; how spaces and activities stereotypically associated with Chinese communities were criminalized to provide rationale for extreme state backlash, with the opium den being a notable example. Because of what was initially meant as a temporary ban, for 61 years, nearly every Chinese national was barred from legally entering the United States (Luibhéid, 18). In a striking and nearly overnight 180, travel sanctions against the Chinese were lifted in 1943 following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the United States’ successive entry into World War II, and the subsequent white terror that followed. Chinese Americans, immigrants and citizens alike (for one of Perry’s most poignant points is that social perception of immigrants is inherently homogenizing; all Mexican people, for example, become “illegal aliens,” which serves to racially criminalize an entire body of people indiscriminately, making harsh punitive measures “commonsense” (Perry)), found their social standing suddenly and unexpectedly elevated by the very same state that had denigrated them for so long, cast as the positive complement to the newly seized upon target of the Japanese by an anxious white population eager to participate in what Perry calls “racial taxonomy” (Perry 170). In the post-war years, pale-skinned Asian populations became conflated in the white mind, homogenizing a significant proportion of people from central and western Asia and recasting them socially once again, this time as the “model minority” in contrast with darker skinned black and brown people, positioned as an “intermediary control stratum” between the idealized white body and the criminalized black body (Perry, 118) – in a middle man, if you will, designed to simultaneously prop up through inherent foreign-ness their white counterparts and serve as an example for their brown and black ones.
Beginning at a different point in the cycle and in space and time, but moving through it with striking parallels, is the story of America’s white ethnic populations.
Initially cast concurrently as exploitable laborers and as morally corrupt scapegoats for the social ills of the day, much like the Chinese before them and the Mexicans yet to come, immigrants from southern and eastern Europe were also remolded in the aftermath of WWII, notably as the civil rights movement took shape; the general social perception regarding people of Italian, Irish, Polish, Jewish, etc. descent shifted from one about criminality, deviance, and congenital racial inferiority to nearly the opposite as white neoliberal projects worked to suppress black power and intellect and to reformulate themselves under a new post-war sociopolitical order. Where for years white ethnics had been viewed by nativists “as racially inferior, fecund burdens on the state” (Perry, 101), they were “whitened” in the process of black subjugation (Pedraza 36-39), and the illusion of successful bootstrap-pulling was created regarding these people in such a way that suggested a demonstrably false premise of equality (Perry, 74). By manipulating the circumstances that create social stratification, including but not limited to targeted legislation and public rhetoric, neoliberal agendas once again effectively weaponized a group of people once subjugated themselves, violently erasing their ethnic and cultural underpinnings in a chilling effort to homogenize the white front against those people it considers its negations. Importantly, in ostensibly contradicting itself by allowing (even creating) such an apparently substantial paradigm shift, the system effectively refreshed its camouflage once again without updating any of its fundamental tenants, especially those of personal responsibility and adherence to family values. This allows for the ongoing reification of the process, which is constantly reconstructing
itself in accordance with the day and age. The parallels between the previous example of the status elevation of Asian people in direct response to racialized and gendered sociopolitical pressures of the day are undeniable; it’s always the same con artist underneath a revolving door of disguises.