In tracing the policies that have shaped the context of incorporation for Latino immigrants, scholars have emphasized the 1990s, and for good reason. California's Proposition 187 and the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) marked a period of virulent anti-immigrant sentiment that arose in direct response to peak historical Latin American and Asian migration. Leah Perry's book, The Cultural Politics of U.S. Immigration: Gender, Race, and Media, convincingly illustrates how the preceding Reagan era set the stage for what she terms “neoliberal crossings”—a crucial ingredient in the cohesion of the neoliberal idea of democracy that would set the stage for immigration policy in the ensuing decades.

Using cultural politics as an analytical lens, Perry uses cultural and legal texts to examine U.S. immigration law and discourse. The introduction reflects Perry's interdisciplinary methodology. Drawing from feminist theory, queer theory, critical legal studies, comparative critical race and ethnic studies, and media studies, Perry traces recurring tropes, narratives, and images about immigration in popular media and law, illustrating how the “nation of immigrants” and “immigrant emergency” discourses established new forms of American common sense about immigration. Ironically, the 1980s were also characterized by new opportunities for visibility amongst racial minorities, as well as by (white) women in pop culture who transgressed heteropatriarchal norms through the bodies of racial others. By including analysis of popular culture texts alongside key immigration policy events, Perry effectively illustrates how neoliberal immigration simultaneously privileged the notion of multicultural inclusion while masking the racial/gendered structural inequalities it produced. Together, the “immigration as emergency” and the “nation of immigrants” supported neoliberalism and legitimized the denial of basic rights to immigrants, and the increase in securitization measures.

In Chapter 1, Perry establishes a framework for the contradictions in immigration policy. Pointing to the 1980 Mariel boatlift as a prime example of how immigration has been discussed as an emergency, Perry deftly shows how, after initially spinning the arrival of Cuban refugees to Florida positively, the media spectacle quickly became alarmist (35). Congressional discussions about the threat of a Cuban criminal element to Florida residents soon ensued. Concerns over the socioeconomic strains the new residents created was reflected in the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act—a bill which included a modest amnesty program, but which also increased employer sanctions, implemented worker verification systems, and increased border security (45). In the context of increasing anxieties related to Latin American and Asian migration, immigrants' rights advocates turned to a popular idealized trope that fashioned the United States as a “nation of immigrants.” Yet, while this strategy was well intentioned, advocates' calls for legalization cast America as an exceptionally egalitarian nation while masking the material reality of racism, xenophobia, and inequality.

Chapter 2, “The Borderlines of Family Reunification,” focuses on the rhetoric of family values, which was a direct backlash to second-wave feminism and hinged on racialized distinctions between white ethnic families and racial others. While films like The Perez Family (1990) reflected anxieties about Latin American immigrant families as threats to “family values” (69), shows like Perfect Strangers and The Golden Girls depicted white ethnics as emblematic of hard-working immigrants who are absorbed into America's melting pot. These shows presented “near queer” families comprised of non-nuclear and even single-gender households. While seemingly progressive, the popular white ethnic characters provided the neoliberal regime with new models of American exceptionalism (72). Ultimately, the pathologizing of Latin American families alongside the idealization of white ethnic families was reflected in racialized exclusions of mostly Mexican seasonal workers in the final Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) legislation.

In Chapter 3, Perry contributes to feminist welfare analysis by linking Reagan-era immigration discourse to the establishment of the neoliberal welfare regime and the pathologizing of the Latina immigrant mother. While critical discussions of welfare reform have largely centered on stereotypes of black femininity, Perry shows how the devaluation of Latina mothering was key to justifying supposedly race neutral laws such as the 1996 IIRIRA, which made immigration law much more punitive and widened the grounds for deportation. Latina mothers were cast as unfit and hypersexualized, while white ethnics (and even Asian immigrants) were vaunted as models of self-sufficiency, heteronormativity, and success.

Perry's intersectional analysis of gendered racialization is key to understanding how the IIRIRA cemented what Juliet Stumpf (Reference Stumpf2017) refers to as “crimmigration,” or the increasing convergence and implementation of immigration through criminal law. Perry traces crimmigration to the Reagan administration, when the criminal Latin American immigrant justified militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border and increasingly punitive laws and procedures. Latino deviance was distinguished from glorified depictions of Italian and Irish criminality, which produced romanticized notions of white ethnics in films like The Godfather. Crimmigration was profitable at the box office as well as for the military industrial complex as Operation Blockade/Hold the Line (1993) and Operation Gate Keeper (1994) militarized the U.S.-Mexico border, increased the Immigration and Nationalization Service budget, and increased and expanded the border patrol. Yet, Perry's analysis adds a much-needed examination of gender, an angle often left out of crimmigration analysis, illustrating how women are particularly vulnerable and become an extremely cost-effective labor force in this model (163).

One of the central questions of Perry's book is how increasing visibility of Latinos and multiculturalism can stand side by side with the violent and inhumane treatment of Latin American immigrants. Perry addresses this question directly in Chapter 5, beginning with a discussion of the “Latin Explosion” and its iconic poster child, Jennifer Lopez. Perry links the celebration of Latino/a culture with the democratic rhetoric surrounding IRCA's amnesty program. Though not an immigrant herself, Lopez and her rags-to-riches story fit neatly into neoliberalism's dominant frame of the United States as a “nation of immigrants” that provides ample opportunity for hard-working immigrants to succeed. Yet, while Latino culture was celebrated, debates about IRCA surfaced the racist notions of undeserving Latinos and people of color. Perry's comparative analysis of Irish legalization campaigns effectively demonstrates the differential treatment of white ethnics and Mexican migrant workers (194). Ultimately, Perry argues that cosmetic equality signified by the rise of stars like Lopez promotes the notion that success in multicultural America is possible for hard-working immigrants, while masking the exploitative and violent conditions inherent in neoliberalism.

In the final chapter, Perry provides a sustained critique of nation-based rights in a neoliberal context in which workers' lives are, by definition, transnational. This is perhaps one of the most compelling insights offered in the book, as Perry shows us how the Reagan era established a common sense on immigration that reappears repeatedly throughout the ensuing decades in policies proposed by both Republican and Democratic administrations. This neoliberal consensus is mirrored in popular culture, and while writers like Junot Diaz and TV shows like Ugly Betty and A Better Life are signs of progress, they are limited alternatives to the neoliberal status quo. Yet, while I generally agree with Perry's analysis of the limits to a rights-based approach to citizenship, her discussion brought to mind the work of scholars who demonstrate that without rights claims, none of the advancements overcoming racial segregation and promoting civil and political rights would have been possible. Thus, while I believe that Perry's critique is useful here, but I would also welcome her suggestions about an alternative to liberal citizenship that resonates with the lived experiences of transnational migrant workers

In sum, observing the changing conditions of American popular culture, Cold War geopolitics, and neoliberalism, Perry speaks to the uncanny ability of the United States to reproduce the mythos of American exceptionalism through the nation of immigrants/immigrant emergency discourse, all the while subjecting Latin American immigrants, especially women and queer migrants, to the inherent violence and structural inequalities of market capitalist logics. Theorizing U.S. immigration policy, beginning on the congressional floor and in popular culture, is a much-needed addition to the vast contemporary literature on U.S. race/ethnic relations, immigration law and policy, and immigrants' rights and social justice advocacy by broadening the “political” sphere to include accounts of how people “consume,” “contest,” and “rework” American common sense on immigration (219). This book makes an invaluable contribution to understanding how the current era is not necessarily a break with, but rather a continuation of, the 1980's Reagan-era neoliberal migration policies.