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Mariah Harrod
Professor N. Eilbaum
Law & Society
2 December 2016
Women in the Home:
Reframing U.S. Immigration Policy as a Feminist Issue
Within the past two decades, the policy and rhetoric surrounding unauthorized
immigration in the United States has resulted in unanticipated and undesirable social alterations.
Not the least of these entails the destabilization of immigrant families whose increased American
residency followed stricter U.S.-Mexican border patrol in the 1990s. Additionally, the tendency
of U.S. law enforcement to deport higher proportions of unauthorized males than unauthorized
females burdens women disproportionately within the home, further crippling their
socioeconomic mobility. As a result, illegal immigration must be viewed through the lens of
feminism if we are to undo the dehumanization of these real, suffering people and see their
plights as intersectional with our own. These connections are essential in motivating public
pressures for necessary immigration reform.
Largely a result of escalating racial tensions, economic anxieties, and xenophobic
political rhetoric between 1980 and 2000, Border Patrol nearly quadrupled officers when, under
the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, its budget increased from $83 million to $1.1
billion (Massey 8; Ngai 21). The increased militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border tempted
laborers—historically accustomed to working seasonally and moving freely without undergoing
the lengthy, costly process of citizenship—to illegally settle in the U.S. and minimize the chance
of arrest or injury by minimizing crossing:

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Foreign-Born Population and Percentage of Total Population, for the United States: 1850-2010
Foreign-Born Population by Region of Birth: 1960 to 2010
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/pdf/cspan_fb_slides.pdf

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Rather than deterring unauthorized migration, stricter border enforcement paired with few
accessible paths for citizenship encouraged predominantly male migrant workers to reduce return
trips to Mexico, instead settling their families where they could better financially support them.
Many even attempted to naturalize. Preceding 1990, Mexican naturalizations never exceeded
30,000 per year; in the 1990s and 2000s about 220,000 Mexicans became U.S. citizens annually
(Massey 10). Indeed, lessened ease of crossing did not remove the economic incentives—
significantly higher-paying American jobs—associated with migrating but promoted single
passages and subsequent residence of new demographics. Thus the rate of unauthorized
immigration, now including more than working males, did not decrease but rather doubled in the
1990s (Massey 8).
Also resulting from increased border monitoring and extra funding to law enforcement
agencies nationwide charged to uphold these statutes, deportations increased from 30,000 per
year to about 400,000 per year beginning in the 1990s (Massey 9). But one gender is
overrepresented in these deportations: men. Though Homeland Securities does not keep data on
deportee gender, “A recent report on Secure Communities found that men constituted 93 percent
of detainees, even though only 57 percent of the unauthorized population is male. One study
found that among those in short-term U.S. Border Control custody on the US-Mexican border,
76.6 percent of interviewees were male… and statistics collected on the US-Mexican border
found that 89.2 percent of repatriated Mexicans in 2010 were male, up from 81.6 percent in
2000” (Dreby 24).
Though the gender disparity in deportations is rarely discussed, conjectures can be made
regarding the causes of such disproportionate representation. Mexicans—who are deported at
higher rates than any other unauthorized nationality—are shaped by machismo culture.

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Traditionally raised to believe that a man must be the dominant provider for a family, Mexicans
residing within the United States often designate primary childcare responsibility to women
while men undertake external employment (Fragoso and Kashubeck 87). As unauthorized
Mexican women are often left in the home performing household duties, unauthorized Mexican
men are superlatively visible to law enforcement and pose a more obvious threat—supposed job
competition and criminality—to those who might be tempted to inform officials. Further, the
relative discretion bequeathed enforcement on who to deport allows sexist bias to influence the
ultimate gender makeup, and women may be seen as less criminal and thus be pardoned at higher
rates than men. Whatever factors produce the outcome of unauthorized Mexican men being
deported at higher rates than their female counterparts, the result is the same: women
traditionally discouraged from employment losing their economic provider and father to their
children, now single mothers in a hostile nation suddenly forced to fend for themselves and their
families.
With increased border enforcement and the discretion allowed law enforcement officials
in deportations, a largely unforeseen feminist issue manifests. Feminist philosopher Susan
Moller Okin writes, “The family is the linchpin of gender, reproducing it from one generation to
the next… Women are made vulnerable by constructing their lives around the expectation that
they will be primary parents; they become more vulnerable within marriages in which they fulfill
this expectation, whether or not they also work for wages; and they are most vulnerable in the
event of separation or divorce, when they usually take over responsibility for children without
adequate support from their ex-husbands” (403). With the sudden political pressure for once-
migrant workers to permanently settle their families in the United States paired with the
difficulties of naturalizing, more women than ever before now actively face the threat of losing

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their financial provider, co-parent, and loved one. Once a person is deported, their chances of
becoming a citizen or returning at all drop drastically, and so these families are permanently
crippled and women disproportionately burdened by the policies. Not only must these women
take on sole responsibility for their children with little communication or support from their
deported husband, but they are forced to work—many for the very first time—outside of the
home in a country teeming with racial tensions, language barriers, and gender discrimination.
Untrained to work, their employment options are limited and underpaid as employers take
advantage not only of their undocumented status but of their dire need to support their children.
Moreover, women in the United States receive ¾ of the wages that men earn for similar work,
and Latinas—especially those who cannot complain about unfair employment treatment for fear
of deportation—earn less than women of all other races (“The Simple Truth about the Gender
Pay Gap” 10).
Policy and rhetoric reciprocally shape and are shaped, so stricter border enforcement and
discretion allowing for overrepresentation of unauthorized male deportations promote and are
promoted by public discussion. These policies economically and psychologically harm women,
costing them their family relationships, hobbies, financial stability, and mental health. No
promotion of immigrant justice is complete without consideration of the personal effects on this
specific demographic. Not only are these folks identifiable as immigrants brave enough to leave
their birthplaces to make a better life for themselves and those they love, they are parents,
spouses, and people who have struggled with the same economic, racial, and gender structures to
which we are all subject. When we begin to see others as complex individuals with relatable
struggles and emotions, our rhetoric regarding them changes; when our rhetoric changes, policy
changes. When policy changes, lives change.

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Works Cited
Dreby, Joanna. Everyday Illegal: When Policies Undermine Immigrant Families. Oakland, CA:
University of California Press, 2015. Print.
Fragoso, Jose M., and Susan Kashubeck. “Machismo, Gender Role Conflict, and Mental Health
in Mexican American Men.” Psychology of Men & Masculinity, vol. 1, no. 2, 2000, pp.
87-97.
Massey, Douglas S. “America’s Immigration Policy Fiasco: Learning from Past Mistakes.”
American Academy of Arts & Sciences, vol. 142, no. 1, 2013, pp. 5-15.
Ngai, Mae M. “Undocumented Migration to the U.S.: A History.” Hidden Lives and Human
Rights in the U.S.: Understanding the Controversies and Tragedies of Undocumented
Immigration, edited by Lois A. Lorentzen, vol. 1, Praeger, 2014, pp. 1-24.
Okin, Susan Moller. “Toward a Humanist Justice.” Feminist Theory: A Philosophical
Anthology, edited by Ann E. Cudd and Robin O. Andreasen, Blackwell Publishing, 2009,
pp. 403-413.
"The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap (Fall 2016)." American Association of University
Women. N.p., 2016. Web. 01 Dec. 2016.