The Domestic and International Politics of U.S. Immigration Policy

Abstract

Although scholars consistently find that public and civic organizations influence political outcomes, few studies have unpacked the black box of organizational choices. And yet, it is organizations, organizational actors, bureaucracies, bureaucrats, and the administrative procedures they enact, that make policy legible to citizens, non-citizens, and even foreign governments. In this dissertation, I present a collection of three papers that apply approaches and methods from the fields of organizational behavior, bureaucratic politics, and international cooperation to examine the domestic and international politics of U.S. immigration policy. In “Beyond Likely Voters: An Event Analysis of Conservative Political Outreach” I collaborate with Sarah James to examine the mechanics of partisan constituency building by examining the strategies of three conservative organizations designed to reach veterans, millennials, and Latinos. We test the claim that the partisan leanings of the target group shape the type of outreach that organizations design and implement. To do so, we create a database using public event announcements from 2012 through 2016, enabling us to test our claims both qualitatively and quantitatively. Our data show that sister organizations with the same political goals vary their outreach tactics depending on the prior political leanings of their target group. Each organization calibrates their outreach by varying the messaging, event structures, policy content, and degree of political requests to match the status quo alignment of each constituency with the political right. Our methods and findings advance scholarship about the on-the-ground tactics used by organizations endeavoring to help political parties expand their constituencies. In “The Bureaucratic Politics of U.S. International Migration Control,” I examine the internationalization of U.S. immigration enforcement, and the role of mid-level bureaucrats, who are often overlooked as key players in both the implementation and the making of U.S. immigration policy. I present original qualitative data on the interests and behaviors of U.S. mid-level bureaucrats in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the U.S. Department of State (DOS), and their relationships with Mexican bureaucrats. The data show that mid-level bureaucrats within the U.S. executive branch behave strategically to increase cooperation between U.S. and Mexican bureaucracies. I call these mezzo-level actors the “managers of migration control.” These actors leverage their managerial powers, weak international principal oversight, and informal transnational bureaucratic relationships to build bureaucratic reputations and leveraging windows of opportunity. U.S. mid-level bureaucrats strategically create bureaucratic reputations among Mexican government audiences to overcome cooperation issues, like that of historical mistrust. For example, the DHS engages in strategies of strategic differentiation to build a reputation as an expert, cooperative organization. The managers of migration control also leverage windows of opportunity, and the threat of unexpected events, to incentivize an expanded U.S. presence in Mexico, and for greater U.S. agency influence on Mexican administrative practices. This strategy is a combination of moving forward political agendas during moments of crisis coupled with tacit coercion rooted in securitized migration. Fundamentally, this article seeks both to explain the internationalization of U.S. immigration enforcement and to expand our understandings of bureaucratic politics through the study of U.S.-Mexican cooperation on migration control. Finally, in Paper 3, “Migration State Type and Migration Control: Comparative Case Studies of U.S.-Mexican Cooperation,” I argue that interstate cooperation on migration control is conditional on migration state type. I focus on the relationship between the United States and Mexico, two asymmetrically positioned states with a long-run history of conflict, coercion, and cooperation across multiple issue areas, including immigration policy. I do not treat the bilateral relationship as one singular, asymmetrical relationship. Instead, I am interested in how and why relationships between the United States and Mexico vary across migrant groups. Empirically, I leverage the variation in Mexico’s migration state types, and conduct comparative case studies of U.S.-Mexico cooperation on migration control. That is, I compare the following cases: U.S. cooperation with Mexico as a migration-sending state, U.S. cooperation with Mexico as a migration-transit state, and U.S. cooperation with Mexico as a migration-receiving state. Across Mexico’s migration state types, I describe the priorities, challenges, and constraints that Mexican administrators face across a set of migrant groups, including Mexican nationals, Guatemalan nationals, Salvadoran nationals, Honduran nationals, Cuban nationals, (non) asylum seekers, and “special interest aliens.” Each migrant group offers a window into the administrative world and challenges of immigration enforcement in Mexico, and the opportunities for cooperation between the Mexico and the United States.