This paper will focus on the criminalization of immigration, how negative publicity is affecting illegal immigration, and how anti-immigrants are influencing on the illegal immigration reform. According to Hipsman and Meissner (2013), immigration has always occurred throughout the American history, but there has been four peak periods that led the United States into the creation of immigration policies. The sole purpose of these immigration policies were to reduce the immigration of specific groups of people who were “overcrowding” the country (Hipsman & Meissner 2013). The term “criminalization of immigration” refers to the policies that were created in order to make it a crime matter for undocumented immigrants or permanent residents who have been deported from the United States to re-enter the country legally (Healy 2011). In other words, if an individual is staying illegally in the United States, which is a crime, he or she will get deported and will also be denied the re-enter to the country. According to Healy (2011), these policies were mainly based of irrational assumptions that …show more content…
People who support anti-immigration reforms tend to be called “racist,” but they see themselves as “non-racist” because they are only supporting on what they think is better for their country. In order to fully understand when somebody is being racist or not we need to differentiate these two terms. According Healy (2011), the term “racist” can be define as when an individual has the belief in which he or she proclaims the a group is inferior to theirs (p.473). Meanwhile, “non-racist” can be define as when somebody is not being influence by someone’s physical characteristics, race, or ethnicity (Keirns 2013, p.250). In the movie Farmingville, Margaret Bianculi-Dyber is a resident of Farmingville and she helped in the creation of “Sachem Quality of Life” which, is a radical group whose main purpose is to get rid of the illegal immigrants within their community (Sandoval & Tambini 2004). She claims to be a “non-racist” person, but when someone see the movie Farmingville one can suddenly realize that she is not what she claims to be due to the fact that, she stereotypes and has prejudice feelings towards all the illegal immigrants. The term “illegal” is not racist at all because it’s just describing the status of an immigrant, but Margaret Bianculi-Dyber uses it in a cruel manner which makes the word sound as a racist thing to say. So, when someone says “illegal immigrant” it does not