Mexico-US Immigration Policy Analysis

On the other hand, walls of opposition were built up against other nationalities and racial groups. For example, in comparison with immigration programs to attract European white people to the United States as permanent residents and then to be granted with US citizenship, worker programs like the Bracero program was only enacted to the end to get more labor force and avoid illegal immigrations towards the United States from Mexico. This program allowed guest workers to stay temporally within the United States until the time the program expired. However, the more frequent American interventions to other Latin American countries, the more people from those countries attempted to cross the Mexico-US boundaries. Massey and Pren (2012) stated: “paradoxical as it may …show more content…
In light of understanding some unintended US immigration policies and why American people feel Latin Americans as threat, the circumstances are based more on the fact that US government did allow people keep together with their families or reunite eventually. For example, Massey and Pren stated that not only illegal immigration increased after 1965 but also the legal migration having a peak at 2, 8 millions from Latin America coming to the United States legally . Massey and Pren stated: “The key to understanding the dynamic of this growth again lies with decisions taken by Congress that had unintended consequences: the decision in 1965 to exempt close relatives of US citizens from the country quotas and a series of decisions from 1986 onward that systematically privileged US citizens, limited the rights and liberties of legally resident noncitizens (“green card” holders), and increased the vulnerability of noncitizens to deportation .” This could explain partially the reasons of why many people remained illegally within the United States after being legal