Global Security and Intelligence Studies Volume 3, Number 2, Fall/Winter 2018 | Page 36

Enemy at the Gates: The Consequential Effects of Securitizing Immigration
white race in opposition to blackness or some other form of otherness” (Delgado
and Stefancic 2012, 85). The impacts of the Great Recession of 2008, solidified the
fear of the Other, among lower middle class voters, who demonized and feared undocumented
immigrant workers perceived as draining social safety net resources
(Judis 2016, 59). The focus of this analysis is how the other is fixed, and feared,
throughout the U.S.’s relation with immigration in the Court, the law, and in the
Executive Office.
In the case of immigration, the debate over the desirability and constitutionality
of the Executive’s security agenda is reminiscent of arguments premised
on the politics of fear and loathing stemming from a securitized interpretation of
immigration earlier in U.S. history. Fear and loathing of an outside Other were
hallmarks of securitized immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, wherein the immigrant Other was viewed as an existential threat to the
United States. The following statement, issued on behalf of the People of California
regarding Japanese immigrants, is reflective of how a securitized interpretation of
immigration—one premised on stringent and comprehensive control of the racial,
ethnic, and ideological makeup of the populace—becomes knottily enmeshed in a
politics of fear and loathing:
In a memorial to Congress, the California Constitutional Convention
in 1879 stated: As became a people devoted to the National Union,
and filled with profound reverence for law, we have repeatedly, by
petition and memorial, through the action of our Legislature, and
by our Senators and Representatives in Congress, sought the appropriate
remedies against this great wrong, and patiently awaited with
confidence the action of the General Government. Meanwhile this
giant evil has grown, and strengthened, and expanded; its baneful
effects upon the material interests of the people, upon public morals,
and our civilization, becoming more and more apparent, until
patience is almost exhausted, and the spirit of discontent pervades
the state. It would be disingenuous in us to attempt to conceal our
amazement at the long delay of appropriate action by the National
Government towards the prohibition of an immigration which
is rapidly approaching the character of an Oriental invasion, and
which threatens to supplant the Anglo-Saxon civilization on this
Coast. (Garis 1927, 316–17)
The foregoing, which characterizes Japanese immigration as an “invasion,”
as viral, resonates with the present attempt by the Executive to securitize immigration
based on the “invasiveness” of immigrants from the Global South and Middle
East, which includes constructing a Great Wall on the U.S.–Mexico border, enhancing
procedures to deter entry into the United States, streamlining deportation
procedures, funding law enforcement and prosecutorial resources to facilitate the
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