Immigration in U.S.-Mexico Relations: Do Human Rights Matter?

• In Event: Retrenchment from the Global Order? US Foreign Policy Under Trump and Beyond

Abstract

Immigration has been a contentious issue in U.S.-Mexico relations for over a century, and has been dealt with in many different ways between the extremes of cooperation and conflict. In the 21st Century U.S. policies regarding its southern border changed from managing the inflow of migrants to accommodate labor needs in the United States to emphasizing deterrence of undocumented immigration by multiplying police agents, expanding the use of physical barriers (walls and fences in some areas along the border), denying asylum applications, and separating families, among other drastic measures. This transformation has been the result of a nationalistic, anti-immigrant backlash after September 2001, and of the rising concern of large pockets of the U.S. population with the presence of Mexicans (and other Latin Americans) in their communities and their impact in U.S. society and politics. The paper will examine this change in U.S. policy in the light of the ambiguous presence of liberal values in Mexico-U.S. relations in general. For many years, the U.S. government did not conduct relations with Mexico according to a liberal agenda, but started doing so toward the beginning of the 21st Century, as Mexico liberalized both economically and politically. The paper will therefore assess to what extent a “liberal convergence” between Mexico and the United States since 2000 has influenced the managing of immigration.

Authors

• Ana Covarrubias, El Colegio de México

• María-Celia Toro, El Colegio de Mexico