Thread: Book Review: Illegal, Alien or Immigrant: The Politics of Im

BOOK REVIEW: ILLEGAL, ALIEN OR IMMIGRANT: THE POLITICS OF IMMIGRATION REFORM

Law and Politics Book Review
November 3, 2009
Reviewed by Karen A. Woodrow-Lafield, Maryland Population Research Center, University of Maryland College Park. Email: WoodrowLafield [at] cs.com.

Illegal, Alien or Immigrant: The Politics of Immigration Reform by Lina Newton. New York and London: New York University Press, 2008. 240pp. Cloth $65.00. ISBN: 9780814758427. Paper $22.00. ISBN: 9780814758434.

pp.795-801

This well-written and insightful book provides an interesting synthesis on the content and patterns of Congressional debate in the making of immigration policies. Newton examines how the official rhetoric about immigration reforms holds a set of narrative types matching policy options associated with images or social constructions of groups to whom reform measures would accordingly direct either rewards or punishments. Many social scientists, professionals, and practitioners have become knowledgeable of many aspects of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) and the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA or IIRAIRA), and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (also known as the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, PRWORA, or PREWORA). Newton contributes to understanding immigration reform in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, what these laws involve, how these laws were made, and why immigration reform continues to be on the agenda. Despite considerable attention from policymakers, there is an accumulation of perceived and real inadequacies, failures, and brokenness, along with unanticipated consequences.

The published record from the Congressional floor serves as a database for Newton’s systematic discourse analysis, as she extracts specific narratives of the IRCA and the IIRIRA debates and contrasts the “causal storiesâ€

These people have to be stopped with their phony lies and misrepresentations and false solutions that only increase the problem rather than solve it.

The solutions to illegal immigration are obvious and irrefutable.

1. secure the borders

2. enforce US immigration law

3. rapidly expand 287 (g)

4. make E-verify mandatory

5. prosecute illegal employers, aiders, abetters and harborers

6. provide no assistance except emergency medical care

7. enforce the 14th Amendment as written, if your parents aren't under the jurisdiction of the US because they are illegal aliens and citizens of another country, then you are not a US citizen when you are born on US soil

8. no amnesty, no shamnesty, no guest worker permit

9. deport illegal aliens with their families intact including all minor children.