U.S. Expansionism, Mexican Undocumented Migration, and American Obligations

2011

In his compelling piece, “Living in a Promiseland? Mexican Immigration and American Obligations,” Rogers Smith argues that the greater the degree to which the U.S. has coercively constituted the identities of non-citizens in ways that have made having certain relationships to America fundamental to their capacities to lead free and meaningful lives, the greater the obligations the U.S. has to facilitate those relationships. Over the last hundred years, many rural communities in Mexico have been constituted more by U.S. immigration policy and the labor demands of U.S. employers than by similar policies and economic factors in Mexico. According to Smith, this means that Mexicans may be owed “…