Research Catalog

Title

The INS on the line : making immigration law on the US-Mexico border, 1917-1954 / S. Deborah Kang.

Author

Kang, S. Deborah, 1970-

Publication

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2017.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

ix, 282 pages; 25 cm

Summary

"For much of the twentieth century, Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) officials recognized that the US-Mexico border region was a special case. Here, the INS confronted a set of political, social, and environmental obstacles that prevented it from replicating its achievements at the immigration stations of Angel Island and Ellis Island. In response to these challenges, local INS officials resorted to the law--amending, nullifying, and even rewriting the nation's immigration laws for the borderlands, as well as enforcing them. In The INS on the Line, S. Deborah Kang traces the ways in which the INS on the US-Mexico border made the nation's immigration laws over the course of the twentieth century. While the INS is primarily thought to be a law enforcement agency, Kang demonstrates that the agency also defined itself as a lawmaking body. Through a nuanced examination of the agency's admission, deportation, and enforcement practices in the Southwest, she reveals how local immigration officials constructed a complex approach to border control, one that closed the line in the name of nativism and national security, opened it for the benefit of transnational economic and social concerns, and redefined it as a vast legal jurisdiction for the policing of undocumented immigrants. Despite its contingent and local origins, this composite approach to border control, Kang concludes, continues to inform the daily operations of the nation's immigration agencies, American immigration law and policy, and conceptions of this border today"--

Subjects

• Mexican-American Border Region > Emigration and immigration
• United States > Emigration and immigration > Government policy
• Border security > Mexican-American Border Region
• Mexicans > Legal status, laws, etc > United States
• HISTORY / Latin America / Mexico
• Immigration enforcement > Mexican-American Border Region
• HISTORY / United States / 20th Century
• Border security > Government policy > United States
• United States > Immigration and Naturalization Service
• Emigration and immigration law > United States
• LAW / Legal History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- A Sectional Immigration Policy -- The Battle for the Border -- Repatriation and Reform -- An Agency in Crisis -- Making the Local National -- The Federal Regulation of the U.S.-Mexico Border -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.

Call Number

JFE 17-1112

ISBN

• 9780199757435 (hardback)
• 0199757437 (hardback)

LCCN

• 2016040692
• 40026704477

OCLC

957133322

Author

Kang, S. Deborah, 1970- author.

Title

The INS on the line : making immigration law on the US-Mexico border, 1917-1954 / S. Deborah Kang.

Publisher

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2017.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Standard Identifier

40026704477

Research Call Number

JFE 17-1112