Between Public Policy and Foreign Policy: U.S. Immigration Law Reform and the Undocumented Migrant

Why it is that U.S. lawmakers are so fixated on the undocumented migrant as a figure of threat? By looking to congressional immigration law reform politics during the 1980s and 1990s, I argue that a possible answer lies in the way that the undocumented migrant is tied to both public policy and foreign policy issues and spaces. I also suggest how this representation of the undocumented migrant at a public policy/foreign policy crossroads links up with the recent reconfiguration of U.S. immigration-related statecraft in the form of heightened interior immigration enforcement.