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Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the
world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers
Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
ISBN 978-0-230-34175-3
Marrero, Pilar.
Killing the American dream : how anti-immigration extremists are
destroying the nation / by Pilar Marrero.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-230-34175-3 (hardback)
1. United States—Emigration and immigration—Government policy.
2. Illegal aliens—Government policy—United States. 3. Immigrants—
Government policy—United States. 4. Illegal aliens—United States—
Social conditions. 5. Immigrants—United States—Social conditions.
6. Latin Americans—United States—Social conditions. I. Title.
JV6483.M2995 2012
325.73—dc23
2012014155
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Introduction 1
Part I
Twenty-Five Years of Immigration Politics
Part II
The Radicalization of Anti-Immigrant Laws and Legal Chaos
Part III
Dreams Have No Visas
Notes 221
Index 233
Introduction
between 2008 and 2009, the number of hate groups grew from
173 to 309, an increase of 80 percent. Consider the Minuteman
Project, which popped up in different areas across the country not
simply to protest against immigrants but to actively report them,
harass them, and guard the border with Mexico, vigilante style, to
catch undocumented immigrants attempting to cross.
The consequences of these phenomena are clearly apparent.
An editorial in the New York Times published in December 2010
raised a warning. Titled “Immigration Hardball,” the piece an-
ticipated that over the course of the next two years, radicals in
Congress would not try to come up with real solutions to the issue
of unauthorized immigration but would instead continue to em-
phasize more of the same: enforcement solutions. “That hard-line
approach mocks American values. It is irresponsibly expensive. It
is ineffective.”4 In other words, there is a price to pay.
Predictably, some Republicans in Congress announced plans
to reevaluate the constitutional right to citizenship for all children
born on American soil. Although some European countries have
taken away what in the US Constitution is a fundamental right of
birth granting citizenship, not only has the action failed to solve
their own immigration problems, but it also has given rise to more
problems by creating a permanent underclass of residents with no
country to call their own and no future.
The growing hostility to immigrants goes against our coun-
try’s vibrant history and raises troubling moral questions. In re-
cent years, the increasingly aggressive and accelerated deportation
of undocumented immigrants has torn families apart and fostered
a permanent population of second-class people. Most people are
unaware of the danger this poses for the nation’s long-term sur-
vival: The world’s sole superpower, increasingly competing with
the growing economies of China and India, cannot maintain cur-
rent levels of prosperity without fully integrating the millions of
immigrants who are already here into society.
Introduction 9
reason for the United States to consider how the country may
benefit from the presence of millions of immigrants who have
worked, lived, paid taxes, and raised families in this country, as
all the past waves of immigrants have done before them.
Romney’s own family emigrated, when his great-grandfather
Miles Park Romney fled across the border to Mexico in the 1800s
to escape the anti-polygamist laws of his own country and live
freely in Mexico, where there were no laws on the books prohib-
iting polygamy, and in spite of it being a very Catholic country,
Mormons could live—at least in their colony—without fear of
prosecution, unlike in the United States.
Politicians sound off about eliminating the magnet that at-
tracts undocumented immigrants. But it is clear that the day that
magnet is gone, and immigrants along with it, it will be the begin-
ning of the end of the United States of America.
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