New Border Officials

Today in Washington Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey gave a press briefing to reporters explaining his new plan to improve border security. The new plan calls for an increased hiring of law enforcement officials, as well as more assistant district attorneys with the sole purpose of prosecuting cases of illegal immigrants, and increased cooperation with Mexican officials to stem the tide of illegal trafficking of weapons from the US to Mexico, and drugs from Mexico to the US.

What is interesting about Mukasey’s stance on border security is that the changes and hiring of new officials has their emphasis on violent crimes committed by illegal immigrants, not on cases involving citizenship.

As I have discussed earlier about the negative connotations of associating illegal immigrants with negative images (such as violent criminals) is beginning to play a role in the policy of the US government. These new steps are another good example of in which official policy is geared towards the imagery of the criminal element in immigration. In her book Lisa Bedolla says of collective identity “… is less about how one sees oneself, that is, one’s personal identity, and more about the values ad attributions one feels are attributed to his or her group...” (p. 7). With this in mind this policy runs the risk of associating the collective identity of illegal immigrants not just as people who broke the law by entering the country illegally, but as violent criminals, we run the risk of loosing sight of the overall picture of fixing the problem of illegal immigration, and more on combating a stereotype that may not be there.

A transcript link to A.G Mukasey’s statement is below: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/prepared-remarks-of-attorney-general-michael-b-mukasey-at-the,289128.html