Immigrant Rights: The Gap between the Rights Offered By Citizenship and the Right That Every Human Is Expected To Enjoy

Introduction

Immigration is the movement of people from one country to another where they are not native. Since the beginning of history, men and women have been crossing political borders to better their economic condition (Calavita, 4-5), reunite with their families, and escape the dangers they faced in their country of origin. Immigration concerns the movement of people across national borders; citizenship concerns who legally belongs to a state. People legally assimilate through citizenship, which excludes and includes. Citizenship is distinct from being a subject of a monarchy in that it implies participating in government. The ideal type of citizenship has been that it is “egalitarian, sacred, national, democratic, unique and socially consequential” (Brubaker, 132). States typically receive people who settle as asylum seekers or refugees, family members of those already settled, labor migrants, or retirees with sufficient resources.

Aim/Purpose of the Study

This study will analyze the social construction of American citizenship and the struggles of undocumented workers and students. This research mainly will focus on immigrants from Mexico. Through dissertating articles, books, and documentary analyses, I will add to my understanding of the broader set of analytical issues. I will explore how the link between citizenship and rights shape the public's stereotypes and discrimination toward undocumented immigrants.

Literature Review

The legal regulation of people movement and national membership leads to disputes, and courts, administrative tribunals, and case level officials work out much of the politics of inclusion and exclusion. (Coutin, 24-41) The places those disputes are addressed include both local and transnational arenas. The number of officials in charge of enforcing borders has expanded as state officials enlist non-state actors to exclude or enforce. Enforcement officials include reluctant or uninterested employers, airlines, and vindictive neighbors as well as police, immigration officers, and schools. Transnational agreements provide guidance and establish structures but do not articulate clearly enforceable rules. In the twenty-first century, these issues are at the top of political agendas in many Western countries. While the focus of discussion in recent years has been on control and exclusion in Western postindustrial states, in earlier decades this was not the case, or at least not for all potential immigrants.

Citizenship Based on Birth or Residence

States have historically organized citizenship through blood and soil, jus sanguinis (law of blood) or jus soli(law of soil or place). Germany, for instance, was a paradigmatically blood-based country for citizenship (Ong, 17-28). France and the United States, alternatively, have seemed more republican, offering citizenship first to all who are born in the territory and second to most who would naturalize. A measure of how open a state is would be the accessibility of naturalization. These two paradigmatic frameworks blur in practice. For example, Germany no longer bases citizenship only on ethnicity, and the United States until 1952 excluded Asians from citizenship on the belief that they were intrinsically not suitable for it. Responsibilities and rights of citizenship have not been available ...