This interview with Rey Koslowski, Professor of Political Science at the University at Albany, was conducted and condensed by Tatti Ribeiro for franknews. Originally published 8.10.21
Rey Koslowski | My research is largely on international migration and border security, primarily looking at international cooperation on migration. I'm particularly interested in the politics of immigration policy-making. I'm also interested in emigration policies regarding exit and the impact of immigrants on their home country's politics.
I have been doing this for way too many years, several decades now. My research was originally focused on migration within the European Union. Gradually over time, the focus has moved more to US immigration policymaking and has since branched out from there to compare the US with Canada and Australia, and even countries like China.
I compare migration policy in different parts of the world and put the United States in a comparative perspective, but also examine the broader consequences of migration for international relations.
I love talking to people who have studied this for a long time because even to my layman's ear, the arguments about borders and immigration are stale. There is a consistent level of migration happening, I think about 3.3% worldwide, and I wonder how you think about the fact that there’s a consistency to human movement over time.
Yes, the number of migrants as a percentage of the world population has been consistently around 3% to 3.5% since I started studying this decades ago. So it's remained fairly consistent but relatively small. The majority of people never leave their country of birth, even Americans. Only 44% of Americans have passports and fewer than half of Americans have traveled abroad. If you think about large populations of India and Sub-Saharan Africa and even China for that matter, large majorities of those populations never will leave their country. Those who cross borders need to have sufficient resources to do so, whether they are crossing as a short-term tourist or a permanent immigrant. Migrants are not the poorest of the poor. In contrast, the number of international border crossings has increased dramatically over the past few decades mostly because a relatively small but growing percentage of the world’s population has enough money to travel internationally – for some, many times in their lifetimes and even many times per year.
I want to talk about border security in the U.S. You look at a place like El Paso, it’s been increasingly militarized over the last few decades. But has that done anything to deter migration? Is there a correlation between borders and security in a tangible way?
Let me start with the question of deterring migration. Most of the focus has been on unauthorized migration when we talk about the border.
There have been many episodes of "securing the border" by either hiring more border patrol agents or building more fences — this is referred to as increased border security or the militarization of the border.
In the mid-1990s Operation Hold the Line and Operation Gatekeeper stationed border patrol agents every hundred yards along the border to deter people from coming. Border Patrol also put up fences so that people trying to cross in urban areas would have to go around through mountains and deserts. The thinking was that migrants wouldn't cross where it is so dangerous. Well, guess what, they continued to cross and as a result, we have more people dying in the desert.
And then of course after 9/11, there was an additional focus on border fencing, through the Secure Fence Act in 2006. But despite all of those resources, the population of unauthorized migrants in the United States basically increased from around 6 million in 1996 to about 12 million in 2007. And it's been around 11 million the last few years.
I would suggest that all of this fencing and increased Border Patrol staffing didn't reduce the unauthorized population in the United States. In fact, Doug Massey and others have made the argument that essentially what happened is that people who had been going back and forth, particularly in agriculture, basically, were now fenced in. Instead of going back and forth to be with their families in the off-season after they made some money, families started to reconstitute themselves in the United States, and were, in most cases, smuggled in. That's how we got to this point.
When it comes down to it, US policymakers aren't willing to do the one thing that they've often said is really important – and that reduces demand for unauthorized migrant labor.
We have very little enforcement of employer sanctions, people who hire unauthorized migrant workers.
There is a fairly good correlation between the business cycle and migration. During the Great Recession, for example, there were fewer apprehensions along the border and many more people leaving the United States. It's not surprising that as we see more demand for labor, we see more migration.
You touched on symbolic politics as a way to look like someone is doing something. Why does that still work?
One thing to be clear about is that many permanent residents and naturalized citizens compete in similar labor markets with unauthorized migrant workers. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, labor unions were pushing for tougher border controls and to get employer sanctions. When labor unions were stronger back then, Democratic politicians would often say, "we are in favor of legal migration, but we need to stop illegal migration.”
One of the reasons that we've seen a certain realignment politically is because along comes a guy who has been employing unauthorized migrant workers, is probably one of the best at practicing these symbolic politics of border control and starts his campaign no less with this issue. And then he becomes the “champion of the working class.”
Democrats also used to oppose NAFTA and trade liberalization, if you go back to the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. In many ways, Trumpism was a means of taking away those issues from the Democrats that appealed to the economic interests of the working class. Keep in mind how well Trump did with Latino voters in 2020. This was a surprise for a lot of people, but a lot of these economic issues resonated and particularly resonated in the Southwest.
How should today’s left respond to these claims about immigration and migration?
I think there needs to be a bit of a rethinking and relistening to a broader range of constituencies that are concerned about economic competition from unauthorized migrants. I think that is a starting point.
Gallup for many, many years has asked the public, "Do you think that the level of immigration in the United States should be decreased, increased or kept at the same level?" And for a long time, the majority of Americans thought that it should be decreased or kept at the same level while fewer than 20 percent thought it should be increased. Now there are more people who would say we need more immigration. But, I think in general, the percentage of those in the middle is shrinking. We are polarized in the way we are approaching the politics of immigration.
And, if you look at all comprehensive immigration reform efforts in the past, reform has only been enacted through coalitions of Republicans and Democrats. It's really hard to see anything like that occurring in the current Congress. Part of the challenge here is that everyone feels like the system is broken, but we don't have the wherewithal to politically address this.
Disappointing.
What do you think we need to focus on in immigration reform?
I mean, I remember being at a conference in 1996 and saying, "we know how to fix this."
This can be addressed quickly and these numbers could be reduced very rapidly, if you enforce some kind of national ID, enforce employer sanctions, have some technology to take advantage of that national ID, and have an entry-exit system to record all of the visa overstays. We have been talking about the border mostly, but over the last decade, most of the unauthorized migrants in the United States entered through airports and overstayed their visas. That needs to be addressed. But guess what, we have no national ID, no enforced employer sanctions, and no entry-exit system. Well, we've got an entry system. What had been proposed after 9/11 – the biometric exit process is not in place either.
Why? Politics. There isn’t a constituency for national ID rights. The NRA and the ACLU are united on that. And, let’s face it. We demand unauthorized migrant labor; ultimately those who benefit are those of us who consume the food and the services of the unauthorized migrant workers.
Those of us who enjoy cheap food, cheap restaurants, and cheap strawberries, which are very labor-intensive, are able to enjoy these things due to unauthorized labor.
That becomes the real problem. I just don't think that there was a political will to really address the issue of authorized migrant workers in the United States. For me, anyway, it's been the same thing over and over since the mid-1990s.
I mean, I teach this and I am basically teaching something that is never going to happen; comprehensive immigration reform is unlikely to ever happen. We can go through the episodes of it over and over, but if you look at our purchasing and who we are willing to support politically as Americans, we really don't want it. We're too happy with our lifestyles. I mean, that might be extreme, but that is the way I feel about it after all of these years.
Lots of circling. Lots of lacking political will.
Every four years or so candidates will do their obligatory, "We are going to change, and we're going to get comprehensive immigration reform," speech. Obama did that. Biden is doing that. I just don’t see it happening.
Things have changed a little bit, however. With what the courts look like, there is a possibility of a ruling that declares DACA unsustainable as an executive action. That would be a complete disaster politically for everyone, for both parties. I think because of that there's enough of a willingness to let go of comprehensive immigration reform and allow some version of the Dream Act to go through. That's my one thought here.
This is an annoying question, but how do you wish politicians would talk about migration and immigration?
Oh gosh. Well, first off I wish they would begin with legal migration. The United States has roughly a million people per year who have adjusted statuses, from temporary status or through family unification who have come from abroad and gotten green cards. This is an amazing policy that has worked well.
There are some people who make this argument that we don't have enough skilled migration and that maybe we should use a point system like Canada or Australia. But, you know, quite frankly, Canada and Australia have had challenges with the point system. Sometimes people don't end up getting the jobs they think they are qualified for, and end up driving taxis. And we do, in fact, give 144,000 green cards that are sponsored by employers.
In many ways, our system is a success, but you don’t see coverage of that.
In my personal experience, it does not feel dangerous to walk across the El Paso / Juarez border. I don't feel the need for security, but people talk about it like a war zone. Why does that still work?
I have relatives down in New Mexico, just north of El Paso. Folks in El Paso really got upset with all of this focus on crime. If you look at the statistics of El Paso's crime rates, they are actually much lower than other big cities in the United States – until of course the mass shooting that targeted immigrants. We saw Trump heavily tie crime and migration together. But, the foreign-born population has slightly lower crime rates than the native-born population.
In terms of the border, we hear talk about drug smuggling, human smuggling, cartels. Well, the vast majority of drugs smuggled into the United States are smuggled through the ports of entry, not between the ports of entry. All of the walls and all of the fences and all of the border patrol, don't really have an impact on the operation of cartels.
After the 9/11 attacks, you see a focus on border security. A lot of the power points and various reports that were originally oriented towards smuggling and crime came out of the drawers and were repurposed to focus on terrorism. This is when we also saw a whole lot of proposals for more restrictive immigration policies and for more funding for the border. It was this merging of crime and terrorism and migration. Everyone was talking about terrorists coming across the Southern border at that time. The 9/11 commission went through and tried to find instances of this; they found one case to focus on, a Lebanese-Mexican restaurateur who had helped smuggle Lebanese into the United States that was potentially associated with Hezbollah. I mean, you look at the Lebanese population and what percentage of the population has received benefits from Hezbollah, it is quite high. So, there was little to be found.
The bigger issue is the crime and the security of Mexican cities on the other side. The issue is these criminal organizations are extorting people and taking advantage of Central American asylum seekers coming through Mexico. I don't necessarily feel, as you say, a sense of fear near the border. However, if you're on the other side of the border and you don't have a roof over your head, and you're far away from home, it's a completely different story.
Does it bother you to see Ted Cruz wading through a river, like, afraid?
Patrick Buchanan, Tom Tancredo, Ted Cruz, they're all, you know, they've been doing that. I'm not surprised. I guess I try not to devote too much of my thinking and energy to what Ted Cruz does.
Is there a way for the Biden-Harris White House to effectively address immigration concerns?
I am going to step back to how I wish policymakers might look at this. When we talk about security this association of terrorism with migration is just wrong. When we talk about security, global mobility is the security threat, whether we are talking about migrants or microorganisms, like the coronavirus.
I don't think our government has adjusted to thinking about this in the long term.
I would think that if the Biden administration or any members of Congress really wanted to address border security, they would focus on international travel and air travel. The administration could make a real difference by devoting resources to testing all travelers. That's really the place to start.