Douglas Massey Commentary

Noted demographer Douglas Massey has has a nice commentary in the Chronicle of Higher Education (June 30, 2006) enitled Borderline Madness.  it starts like thius:

The U.S.-Mexico border is much more than a boundary between two nations. Over the years, it has become a symbolic stage upon which the nation’s insecurities and fears, hopes and dreams, are projected for public consumption. As Peter Andreas points out in his book Border Games: Policing the U.S.-Mexico Divide (Cornell University Press, 2000), American border policy has less to do with the underlying realities of Mexican immigration than with America’s view of itself and its place in the world. The latest act on this stage is President Bush’s sending 6,000 National Guard troops to support the U.S. Border Patrol. That will have little effect on the rate of undocumented immigration, but serves the symbolic purpose of signaling to social conservatives that the president is tough on border security. He evidently hopes that will encourage them to buy into an expanded temporary-worker program and a new legalization proposal that would give 12 million illegal immigrants a chance to attain permanent residence.

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KJ