Strategies? Do You Really Want to Learn About Strategies? Let´s Talk About the Center for Immigration Studies.

Talking points of the presentation of Dr. Gustavo Cano in the Foro Nacional para la Construcción de una Política Migratoria Integral y Democrática en el México del Bicentenario. Morelia, Michoacan, Mexico. September 24, 2010.

Who?

* The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) defines itself as an “independent, non-partisan, non-profit, research organization,” that provides “immigration policymakers, the academic community, news media, and concerned citizens with reliable information about the social, economic, environmental, security, and fiscal consequences of legal and illegal immigration into the United States.”

* It was founded in 1985, and in the last 25 years it has gone from an average anti-immigrant organization to the most influential conservative, anti-immigrant think tanks in the United States.


What?

* Other way to define the CIS is an anti-immigrant organization that is very well organized, well financed, and that has very well defined targets, that chooses its battles in a very smart way, that plans in a very meticulous way how to affect migration-related public policies, and most important of all: the CIS tells you “how you should think about and approach the issue.”


How?

1.- The CIS defines very well its targets: Congressmen, members of the Senate, the academy, the donors, the media, and the people, mostly U.S. citizens.

2.- The CIS uses certain tactics and “mantras” to push over its speech all over the place, all the time:

** The CIS tends to cover their anti-immigrant aims through a persuasive pro-immigration speech.

** The CIS’ position in its writings is that of a minority taking the position of the majority.

** For the CIS the American future and present are both in danger because of immigration flows and policies. Indeed, the future can be solved in the present, with the right kind of anti-immigrant policies.

** Illegal immigration is a crime, period.

** There is a master use of the U.S. media to touch average U.S. minds about all the negative aspects of immigrant population living in the U.S.

**The CIS makes no distinction between “consequences” and “potential consequences” of the immigrant’s presence in U.S. soil.

**The CIS makes a constant emphasis about the “Mexican immigrant” component, whenever referring to illegal immigration.

3.- The following could be labeled as the CIS’ main strategic virtues in its struggle against immigration:

** The CIS is consistent about the negative aspects of immigration, all the time, all the topics, all the way up.

** It is very clear to them that everything is “about location, location.” They have their headquarters in Washington D.C., and they take advantage of that in every single way.

** They exert in a skillful way something called strategic, outcome oriented, thinking.

** They have full time personnel and researchers.

** They have full time targets.

** They have clear goals.

** They have a well established and stable flow of financial resources.

** They give follow up to everything, every issue, every actor, every news, every law initiative, every action from any major pro-immigrant group or think tank… Generally in a timely fashion.

** They are forming a school of followers among U.S. undergraduate and graduate students.

** They use the media in a masterful way to spread half-truths and half-lies about immigration in the U.S.

** They know very well how the political system and its relationship with the media work.

** They have become a XXI Century Anti-Immigrant Talking Points Machine.

4.- The CIS processes reliable information into new information that seeds the doubt about the credibility of reliable information sources. The logic is beautiful: our stuff is valid because it came up from reliable, public, sound information. This new information, which offers new perspectives on immigration issues, contradicts information that otherwise would be considered reliable information. The doubt is born. Naïve migration scholars, mostly the young and even the foreign, take the new information as is, without further verification, and consider it as a 100% reliable information. The job is done.

5.- The CIS has a very complete agenda of immigration issues, practically nothing escapes to the black hole: they defend the Arizona’s anti-immigrant law; they label immigration as a security threat to the U.S.; they also assert that immigration is a threat to U.S. national identity; they state that the struggle against immigration is the equivalent to a Second U.S. Civil War; they are against giving U.S. citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants (“illegal immigrants”); they use frequently all-inclusive remarks to expose their arguments: “Everyone agrees that Arizona has a huge illegal immigration problem;” they assert that immigrants steal jobs to the youth and low-skilled workers; immigration costs are more expensive than benefits to the government and society, in the present and in the future; immigration is not sustainable in fiscal terms; the Mexican consular ID is a shield that protects criminal activity in the United States; etc.


Successful?

Indeed, very successful the compadres from the CIS.

* CIS flow of half-truth/half-lies information shows strong progress in dividing the academic community in the U.S. regarding the discussion about the true advantages and disadvantages of legal and illegal immigration. It’s like creating two sets of truths, that of the CIS and that of real, scientific work in the Social Sciences.

* I have the impression that the CIS is little by little making significant progress in the media battle with other serious research centers or think tanks, like the Pew Hispanic Center, the Migration Policy Institute, the National Immigration Forum, or the American Civil Liberties Union.

* CIS’ information circulates among influential decision makers in Washington D.C. The mission is two folded: first, the CIS offers “bold” data for anti-immigration conservatives to make their points in the legislative work in the U.S. government and, second, the CIS seeds the doubt among the center-liberal/conservative group in the legislative branch. Center-Republicans and Conservative Democrats are the main target here. Every Congressman or Senator that pays attention to whatever the CIS has to say is touched in a meaningful way. The Directors of the CIS also testify at House hearings, by the way.

* The results of the CIS work are amazing if we consider that what they offer, at the end of the day, is nothing more and nothing less than half-truths and half-lies. They just master the media and have a very clear and efficient strategy to spread their stuff in the minds of the average politician, the average scholar, and the average citizen of the United States.


What can Mexican immigrant organizations learn from all this?

* Everything, with exception of making their point through a strategy of half-truths/half-lies. Here what matters is precisely the “how.”

* It is important for organized Mexican immigrants to understand that, in order to survive in this information war and to deal with a growing anti-immigration wave in the U.S., they have to create full time organizations, with well defined targets, stable funding resources, and have a well defined media strategy.

* I personally think that all that immigrant coming and going among local, state and federal Mexican authorities bring poor political results to the Mexican community that lives in the United States; in the sense that if the community wants to do progress in the U.S. (to live the Mexican Dream in the United States, and certainly not the American Dream), they need to address their problems in the United States, they need to solve their problems with all the set of tools that are available to them in the United States, they need to understand how the political system and society work, they need to take the bull by the horns in U.S. soil. Nobody can deal better with the issues of Mexican undocumented immigrants than organizations of undocumented immigrants, not even Mexican American or Chicano organizations. Certainly these organizations should be part of the effort (as well as other non profit pro-immigrant American organizations), but the solution and the strategy must come from the Mexicans themselves, the ones who live and work in the United States.

* Yes we can.

Arpaio Superstar

Joe Arpaio is the Sheriff of Arizona’s Macopa County. He is famous because of his hard-core stand against undocumented immigration. His critics argue that his actions are based on racial profiling. In April 2008, the Mayor of Phoenix, Phil Gordon, requested a Civil Rights Investigation to the Attorney General of the United States. The request is based on “Sheriff Arpaio’s pattern and practice of conduct that includes discriminatory harassment, improper stops, searches, and arrests.” More recently, the U.S. Department of Justice launched a new civil rights investigation of Macopa County Sheriff Office for unconstitutional searches and arrests, and discrimination on citizens based on national origin.

The actions of Arpaio have been firmly documented by the East Valley Tribune in the investigation "Reasonable Doubt." The main argument of the newspaper investigation is that since the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) started to work as an “immigration agency” in March 2006, there has been slower response times on emergency calls, a dropping arrest rate, and sporadic excessive overtime costs. Moreover, the Goldwater Institute, in a Policy Report (December 2008), concluded that the Sheriff’s Office has failed to fulfill its core mission in the areas of providing law-enforcement, support and detention services. This is, the report finds that “MCSO’s effectiveness has been compromised for the past several years by misplaced priorities that have diverted it from its mission.” The report also details all the trouble that the MCSO is currently going through by giving priority to its immigration enforcement efforts (instead of addressing basic law-enforcement functions): violent crime rates soaring, financial crisis of the office, accumulation of a “huge backlog” of outstanding warrants, costly lawsuits for excessive use of force and inadequate medical services in the MCSO’s detention facilities, “chronically poor record-keeping and reporting of statistics, coupled to resistance to public disclosure,” etc.

In addition to all this mess, Sheriff Arpaio loves public attention. He even has his own TV reality show: Smile ... You're Under Arrest! , which is labeled by FOX as “original, inventive, unique and funny.” Sheriff Arpaio also likes to answer any type of questions from any type of media and he displays an incredible array of arrogance and cynicism whenever his actions are questioned. I mean, you can see that the guy enjoys liberal media like nobody else. In a recent interview in NOW (PBS, March 2009), Arpaio interrupts the interviewer at will, states that he does not care whatever the East Valley Tribune has to say (even if what the newspapers says is based on data from his own office), labels the Goldwater policy report as “garbage,” contradicts himself several times; and, when cornered by the interviewer, he graciously launches phrases like “nothing is ever perfect in law enforcement,” “just take my word for it,” or “I don’t like statistics.”

How come that Arpaio is now a Superstar? The answer has three components. First, Arpaio has been reelected by 55% of the vote in his county in 2008. So, he has the support of the majority in his jurisdiction, he backs his actions on the legitimacy that the popular vote gives to his mandate. Anti-Hispanic/immigrant sentiments by a majority of white (mostly non-Hispanic) population is not an uncommon aspect of Southern border states, indeed, it is an historical fact which started to develop in the region right after Mexico lost the 1848 War. Second, the core of Arpaio’s actions is backed by the Bush administration’s failed efforts to deal with the immigration issue: ICE partnered with MCSO in early 2007 as part of the 287(g) program (named after the section of federal law that created the program). The 287(g) program allows ICE-trained local officers to act as federal agents in terms of enforcing immigration laws. Last, and certainly not least, the usual suspect: the media. As long as Lou Dobbs and Bill O’Reilly keep on praising Arpaio’s crusade or the FOX network keep on supporting his reality show, for example, the stature of this and other characters will keep on growing in terms of popularity.

Good news is that this is America. The Obama administration has the opportunity to show that the president means what he says by putting aside programs like the 287(g) and working with the legislative branch in implementing a comprehensive plan to deal with undocumented immigration at a federal level. Less reality shows and more getting real on the matter. Lawsuits are sending strong signs to other local law enforcement and governmental entities about the financial consequences of diverting scarce resources to tasks that are no priority in their basic law-enforcement commitments. Also, it is good news that there is a relatively well consolidated informal network of news coverage personalities that have proved capable in making their point on the issue: Jorge Ramos, Geraldo Rivera, Maria Hinojosa, Malín Falu, etc. All this, of course, in addition to daily broadcasts by el famoso Piolín de la Mañana and other radio activists across the nation and to the fact that responsible citizens, like Stephen Lemons in his blog Feathered Bastard, have followed closely the doings of el Compadre Arpaio...

The 2006 Immigration Rallies in the U.S. from a 2009 Perspective

Almost three years have passed after the historical immigrant rallies took place in the United States. In that year, between March 11 and April 7, a number between 500,000 and 900,000 persons took to the streets in 76 cities. During the weekend of April 8-10, an estimate of 1.4-1.7 million people participated in rallies in 108 localities. Finally, on May 1, an estimated 1.2-2 million people in 63 cities across the nation participated in rallies linked to an economic boycott. The rallies of April 10 and May 1 are historical in the sense that for the first time in the U.S. millions of people took to the streets in a peaceful, simultaneous way, across the country.

Mobilizations were triggered when the United States House of Representatives passed the bill H.R. 4437 titled “Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005.” This bill would make illegal presence in the United States (U.S.) a felony. The bill also would require the Department of Homeland Security to construct a double security fence across several portions of the Mexican border; would encourage local police to enforce immigration law; would make it a felony “to assist, encourage, direct, or induce to enter or remain in the country with knowing or reckless disregard” of the fact that immigrants reside in the country illegally; and would impose a maximum fine of forty thousand dollars per undocumented worker that an employer hires or that an agency helps to find work. This legislative measure affected directly the interests of the Catholic Church.

The most important actors in the mobilization process of millions of immigrants were the Catholic Church, the Hispanic media, immigrant-oriented organizations and the immigrant him/herself. At this point, the learned lessons were the following: 1) the capacity of immigrant mobilization of the Catholic Church (mostly Latinos) is powerfully unique. The Church triggered the protest against the H.R. 4437 and ended the marches as soon as it was evident that its interests were no more at risk. 2) The role of immigrant-related organizations and the Hispanic media were also very important actors in the coordination of the rallies. However, they have no capacity to organize immigrant mobilizations at a national level. In that sense, they depend on a major force (the Catholic Church) to become an important actor in a major, effective mobilization effort. 3) The massive participation of the immigrants probed two things: a) that they are invisible no more, now they know that taking to the streets is a feasible option for major challenges; b) that they are important for the American economy, indeed, they have been important for the American economy since the 1960s, to say the least. Otherwise, the H.R. 4437 would also have passed in the Senate.

There are two things that are different in 2009 when compared to 2006. We have Obama in the presidency and the U.S. is facing gargantuan economic challenges. Historically speaking, when things go wrong in a generalized way in the economy of any country in the world, recent-arrived immigrants tend to be blamed for everything and anything… Chances are very high that the activity of anti-immigrant groups will skyrocket. This, in addition to the fact that many immigrants are losing their current job at a rapid pace. It is expected that first they will move within the U.S. in their search for work, and then they would consider the option of going back to their place of origin. This decision is more difficult to those immigrants who have American-born children, regardless of their migratory status.

Then we have Obama and a Democratic Congress. This only means that the coin is in the air in terms of the feasibility of an immigration reform favorable to the U.S. economy and the immigrant themselves, mostly the undocumented who are already in U.S. soil. Obama’s plan to rescue the economy is not implemented yet and there is no word or speculation about the role of the immigrant labor force in the dynamics of recovery of the U.S. Assuming that there will be a relatively fast recovery, the market forces could take care of the issue. However, if recovery takes longer or, even worst, if things go bananas despite the recovery effort… well, let’s wait and see. And pray. Two things are for sure: Mexico and certain Central American countries have no private or public resources to deal with millions of people going back home in a relatively short period of time; and the United States will need immigrant labor to assure continuing growth once the worst has come and gone. Conclusion: the economic recovery, the sooner, the better; for everybody’s sake. San Obama, we trust you. Congress’ angels: we also trust you, even the dark ones, no problem. Indeed, we have no choice.

For a more complete explanation of what happened in the 2006 rallies, please take a look to my website, Immigration Research Now. I also have opened a temporary expo-web (an expo in the web that is not permanent) with images of the rallies published by the national media at the time. The expo-web is a work in progress, which means that you can take a look to the first 25 images right now and that in the next couple of weeks there will be at least 75 more images to watch. Enjoy.