The core premise of Rogers Smith's “Living in a Promiseland? Mexican Immigration and American Obligations” is compelling. The long, tortured relationship and ongoing tensions between the United States and Mexico have ensured that many Mexicans need to emigrate to the United States in order to survive and maintain their families, and that the United States will absorb their labor regardless of their immigration status. Evidence of the imbalance in this relationship appears in the fact that approximately 11 percent of people born in Mexico now reside in the United States.Footnote ¹ The high numbers of these immigrants, their low levels of social capital at the time of migration, and the racialized environments into which many migrated have ensured that they and their children's incorporation into U.S. society finds repeated intergenerational barriers that are greater than those experienced by most other migrants to the United States.Footnote ²

The provocative question raised by Smith is whether this history and the racialized context of reception, which he carefully documents, can best be ameliorated through targeted immigration policies that would create more opportunities for Mexican migrants compared to others. As he acknowledges, any such solution would undoubtedly prove controversial in the current political environment. My sense is that because of this environment, which he acknowledges as being a continuing dimension of U.S. politics, targeted immigration policies benefiting Mexican immigrants would meet the same fate as the United States' early-twentieth century experiment with national origin-based immigration quotas—and likely much more rapidly. Instead, the more universalistic principles that guide contemporary U.S. immigration policies can better serve the needs of potential Mexican migrants and Mexican immigrants resident in the United States. Maintaining the present immigration system and supplementing it with an inclusive legalization program would ultimately better serve the needs of Mexican migrants (and keep them out of the crosshairs of immigration restrictionists). There are two principles behind the present system in particular that serve U.S. interests as well as those of potential migrants from Mexico: first, a preference for family members of U.S. citizens and (for a narrower set of family members) permanent residents that has been central to U.S. immigration law since 1965, and second, a reliance on legalization programs for long-term unauthorized migrants. Additionally, I am more skeptical than Smith about the depths of Mexico's commitment to binational strategies to address the needs of its émigrés abroad, a commitment that offers him confidence that the bilateral immigration environment is in flux.

Post-1965 U.S. immigration law is shaped by two somewhat contradictory principles. U.S. immigration law allocates the majority of immigrant visas to immigrants with immediate family members in the United States. Although their share is declining, since 1965 such family members have received more than half of all permanent resident visas issued by the U.S. But meeting national labor needs is another principle of current immigration policy. Recipients of employment-based immigration visas include both highly-skilled workers and immigrants of more modest training who have skills that native workers do not. U.S. immigration law does include limits by country, but Smith overstates the effects of these quotas on Mexican migration, because immediate family members are exempt from these limits (as are refugees). Over the past decade, more than 1.7 million Mexicans have immigrated to permanent residence in the United States, making up approximately 16.5 percent of legal immigrants in this period.Footnote ³ It is hard to imagine that a revised system, guided by a recognition of the “special obligation” to remedy the consequences of the “coercively constituted [Mexican] identity,” would considerably expand Mexican access to immigration to permanent residence in a world where many seek to migrate, and where few countries would cede the prerogatives of their natives to potential Mexican migrants.Footnote ⁴

This concern is exacerbated by Senate debates in the most recent period of serious Congressional debate on comprehensive immigration reform. Media attention to these debates focused extensively on new enforcement initiatives and on the legalization of unauthorized immigrants. When the Senate originally took up immigration reform in 2007, however, it also briefly debated a dramatic change in eligibility for permanent residency. The proposed criteria focused more on education, job skills, and English-language ability, and much less on having family members in the United States. Each of these traits was to be assigned a point value, and applicants would have needed a certain number of points to qualify (a number that could shift from year to year). Under such a point system, family ties to the United States alone would be highly unlikely to qualify someone for legal immigration. The Senate debate ended in stalemate and the post-1965 framework remained in place, but it is likely that when Congress again takes up immigration reform, proposals of this sort will resurface. Such a change would considerably reduce the ability of Mexicans to migrate and unify binational families.

Yet another, often unstated, principle guiding U.S. immigration law in the era of immigration restriction (roughly, since the beginning of the twentieth century) is the recognition that long-term undocumented residents who have become part of U.S. society should have the opportunity to regularize their status. The United States implemented large-scale legalization programs in the 1920s, 1940s, and 1980s, and smaller programs at other times. Legalization is central to any “comprehensive” reform of immigration today. Past legalizations have particularly benefited women, Southern and Eastern Europeans, and Mexicans, though each was implemented in such a way that little-recognized unauthorized populations could also benefit (Canadians, for example, in the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act). The beneficiaries of such a program today would also be diverse in terms of national origin, though Mexican immigrants would make up the majority. Mexican immigrants made up approximately 55 percent of unauthorized immigrants in 2000 and 62 percent in 2009.Footnote ⁵ Their share of the pool of eligible immigrants for a new legalization program would likely be in this range. Once legalized, these new permanent residents would, under current law, be able to petition for the immigration of immediate relatives, which would again offer more opportunities to Mexicans than to nationals of other countries.

I am considerably less sanguine than Smith is about a secondary premise of his argument: a greater willingness that he perceives on the part of the Mexican government to foster binational cultural citizenship for its émigrés. Just as a reading of the tortured history of U.S. treatment of Mexican immigrants should ground an understanding of Arizona's SB 1070, a reading of the history of Mexico's treatment of its émigrés should lead us to question the depth and longevity of Mexico's commitment to facilitating dual nationality or dual economic and cultural citizenship for its émigrés. Smith identifies potentially the most fundamental change in Mexican policy toward its émigrés, the 1998 constitutional amendments that allowed Mexicans who have lost their Mexican citizenship through naturalization in another country to recover their Mexican nationality. Setting aside the important difference in the minds of Mexican policymakers between nationality and citizenship (nationality can be rescinded by constitutional amendment; voting is a right reserved to citizens), the Mexican government ensured that the implementation of dual nationality would restrict the number of second-generation Mexicans (foreign-born children of Mexican subjects) and Mexicans who had previously naturalized in another country who could take advantage of the new constitutional provisions. A complicated application process and extensive requirements for original or certified documents has ensured, for example, that only 67,000 of the perhaps 10 million Mexican Americans eligible for dual nationality have applied for it.Footnote ⁶ The constitutional change does allow Mexicans who naturalize in another country after 1998 to establish Mexican nationality, but this status does not allow for voting in most cases.

Mexican outreach to its émigrés has a long history that should encourage caution about how effective it will be in developing a long-term, positive, and mutually-supportive relationship. In the 1920s, just as the Mexican immigrant population in the U.S. surged for the first time, Mexico used its consuls to organize Mexican workers to serve the interests of the Mexican government and their American employers by undermining those workers' connections to independent unions. Labor historian Gilbert Gonzalez characterizes the Mexican efforts as seeking to develop a loyal and politically-dependent emigrant community among Mexican Americans.Footnote ⁷ Later in the century, Mexico steadily sacrificed the protections it had originally negotiated for participants in the Bracero program in order to protect that program and the revenues it was generating for the Mexican government.Footnote ⁸ Also, funds deducted from Braceros' paychecks that were originally to be paid back upon workers' return to Mexico are only now being paid, almost sixty years after the program ended. More recently, to further strengthen the connections between Mexico and its émigrés, the Mexican government sought to formalize those ties through the Program for Mexican Communities Living Abroad and the Institute of Mexicans Abroad. These programs gave Mexican émigrés an organizational structure and a voice, but the émigrés quickly learned that the top-down nature of these organizations limited their ability to shape the official émigré agenda.Footnote ⁹ Further, the commitment of the Mexican government to these new structures appears to vary from presidential administration to presidential administration. This history, though anecdotal, should suggest caution about the depth and longevity of Mexican government commitments to facilitating dual nationality among its émigrés.

The size of the Mexican émigré population, its mixed legal status, and its dispersion ensure that it will continue to be the focus of U.S. policymakers' ire. Its contributions to the U.S. economy and its society, however, particularly when considered along with the economic and social contributions of U.S.-born Mexican Americans, ensure that even if policies of exclusion benefit their proponents in the short term, it will cost them in the long run. Efforts to recognize the “special obligation” identified by Smith would be better focused on ensuring that Mexican immigrants have equal opportunities to incorporate into U.S. society as do immigrants from other parts of the world. This is not a claim for a special place for Mexico or Mexican immigrants, but instead it is a call for the United States and its state governments to live up to their responsibilities to implement policies equally, an obligation that they have routinely neglected in the past.