Study Guide

Gonzales, Mexicanos chapter 10

The Hispanic Challenge

  1. Current Population Survey (CPI) – indicates approximately ____ million – about _____ % being “illegal”
  1. Latinos are the largest ethnic minority in the United States comprising about ____% of the population
  1. Push and Pull –
  1. Push:
  1. “Mexico’s failure to provide its citizens a decent living”[?]
  1. Two nations – one economy
  1. A neoliberal agenda – the last five presidents trained at Harvard or Yale business schools
  1. Maquiladora sector
  1. NAFTA
  1. Flooding the Mexican agricultural sector with cheap subsidized corn

5.  Harvest of Empire

6.  Average Mexican living on $4/day in 2005

7.  Drug, lawlessness, political corruption

b.  Pull:

i.  Jobs

1.  Domestic work

2.  Slaughterhouses/poultry processing The New Jungle

3.  Construction

4.  Field work

5.  Casual labor

ii. Remittances – third of three biggest income generators –

iii.  Education

  1. The Mexicano Diaspora and the Nativist Response
  1. Rise in nativism/xenophobia (“cultural conservatives”)
  1. Media hype – e.g., Lou Dobbs on ______-- Immigration quotes
  1. Vigilante groups, e.g., Federation for American Immigration Reform (“FAIR”)
  1. Minuteman
  1. Riders USA
  1. Hate groups – (monitored by the Southern Poverty Law Center)
  1. Reactionary legislation (p. 276)
  1. CA Proposition 187
  1. CA Proposition 209
  1. CA Proposition 227
  1. Federal laws
  1. Operation Gatekeeper – 1993
  1. Illegal Immigration and Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act – 1996 (upping the ante for border patrol)
  2. Welfare Reform Act – 1996 (excludes permanent residents from most social welfare programs)
  1. Fence Act – 2006
  1. Deaths along the border
  1. Responses
  1. Local ordinances ( p. 281)
  1. Republican Party Politics
  1. Culture wars
  1. Fear mongering – e.g., the Second Red Scare
  1. Communists
  1. Immigrants and terrorists
  1. The Right wing media – “The Republican ______machine”
  1. The Southern strategy and the “race card”
  1. Nativism and “the base”
  2. Big business wing of the party (p. 280)
  1. Businesses penalized?
  1. Democratic Party Politics
  1. More diverse
  1. Corporate sponsors
  1. Status quo
  1. “White flight”
  1. Divide and rule
  1. Chocolate cities and vanilla suburbs
  1. Middle class and cultural synthesis
  1. Class matters