Immigration Policies In Steven Soderbergh's 2001 Film

The immigration laws that have been enacted in the United States reflect the politics and migrant flows of the times, with early immigration laws focusing on the migration of people from Europe and Asia, and more recent regulations targeting Mexican immigrants. The gradual shift in focus towards Latin American immigration in the U.S. is most closely attributed to growing concerns of national security, because most Americans view migrants crossing the border as violent drug smugglers. Steven Soderbergh’s 2001 film, Traffic, contributes to the notion that the border is extremely dangerous, however, almost all of the violence that takes place in the film happens on American soil. Due to the numerous immigration policies and regulations that have been executed in the U.S., the amount of violence near the borderlands has decreased, creating the possibility that Hollywood’s violent, war-torn representation of the American borderlands is an …show more content…
The film portrays a lot violence, even though there are countless “measures [that emphasize] border control, and [prioritize] enforcement of laws on hiring immigrants and tightened admissions eligibility” that have had a positive impact on the war on drugs (Cohn). In fact, there has been such an overwhelming amount of success in monitoring the border and combating illegal immigration, that “most recent changes in immigration policy have been an exception” to the normal pattern of exclusion experienced by Mexican immigrants. President Obama has taken “executive action to allow young adults who had been brought to the country illegally to apply for deportation relief and a work permit,” because he has enough confidence in the work that border patrol and the Department of Immigration and Naturalization Services has done in order to allow immigrants to safely assimilate into American culture