Law professors Antoinette Sedillo Lopez and Gloria Valencia-Webber examine powerful immigrations stories and try to help people reframe these stories in light of underlying realities.
by Benson Hendrix
After September 11, 2001, the United States government began tightening rules on immigration into the United States, primarily on the U.S.-Mexico border. However, while immigration rules were examined and strengthened, several root causes were left out of the equation. Reasons people immigrate to the United States from Mexico, stories they heard of a better life up north, and travel of indigenous peoples whose homelands straddle the U.S.-Mexico border are some of the overlooked issues.
Two University of New Mexico School of Law professors, Antoinette Sedillo Lopez and Gloria Valencia-Weber examined some of these root causes and the impact of a post-September 11 worldview on these groups. The two colleagues began by studying the impact of stories of success and heartbreak as told by people who crossed the U.S.-Mexican border. This initial topic led the two professors to look at different aspects of immigration reform in the Southwest.
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His name was Pablo Lewis.
He graduated from high school in Arizona, joined the U.S. Army, served with the Second Armored Division in Germany during World War II, came back to the U.S., and worked for the federal government before retiring.
When Lewis applied for Social Security benefits, he could not prove he was a citizen because he was born on the Tohono O’odham reservation south of the U.S.-Mexico border. He had no birth certificate.
Valencia-Weber wants to know why this happened, and how to keep it from happening to members of other tribes whose homeland spans the borders of the United States and either Mexico or Canada.
When the United States government worked on new immigration rules post-9/11, a topic not addressed was the impact of these rules on groups already crossing both borders into the United States, members of “transnational” tribes.
“From the point of view of indigenous sovereigns, the border lines were arbitrarily drawn and don’t match the historic relationship and homeland borders of these people,” Valencia-Weber says.
The political relationship between these transnational tribes and the United States can be tracked to treaties. For Native American tribes on the U.S. and Canadian border the Jay Treaty, signed in 1794, guaranteed the rights of tribal members to pass across the U.S.- Canada border.
A similar treaty exists between the United States and Mexico, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
“Guadalupe Hidalgo is the core treaty to preserving the rights of tribes throughout the Southwest,” Valencia-Weber explains. “Hidalgo is key because it incorporates the agreements with Spain and Mexico as well, who agreed to recognize the sovereignty of the tribes.”
After 9/11, the new United States Department of Homeland Security’s Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) began tightening travel restrictions not only for U.S. citizens, but also for members of the 25 tribes spanning both borders, and the almost 50 additional tribes that share commonality with those tribes and who also had free travel rights. New rules require everyone to have a passport to enter at the U.S. border.
Federal courts have said the relationship between tribes and the U.S. is “trust” based, that the U.S. is acting in trust to provide for the tribe, like a trustee responsible for a ward. Lipan Apache Dr. Eloisa G. Tamez challenged Homeland Security’s travel restrictions and the construction of a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas. A recent court decision determined that the federal government did not act in good faith.
After the recent court ruling, Valencia-Weber is waiting to see if the Department of Homeland Security will consult and work with transnational tribes to develop an agreement to address Homeland Security’s concerns with the life, customs, and travel needs of the tribes.
“No one wants lawbreakers, smugglers, and terrorists to use tribal homelands to get into the United States,” Valencia-Weber says. “But these tribes do want to ensure that tribal members will be respected in their political right to travel their homelands.”
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“The term ‘illegal immigration’ conjures up issues of criminality, while displacement of communities describes what is happening to many Mexican villages and towns,” Professor Sedillo Lopez says. “I think that framing the issues around family unity, cross-border communities, cross-border environmentalism, and Mexico/U.S. collaboration can help people see the many complexities of the issue.”
As research, Sedillo Lopez read articles in news outlets while directing a summer law school program in Guanajuato, Mexico, and examined how the articles were framed and how that view affected the emotional response of the readers. Stories in Mexican newspapers about life in small villages carried a tremendous impact on their readers.
These stories portrayed small villages as ghost towns, dying off and leaving a population primarily made up of women, children, and the elderly, with the men leaving to find their fortunes in larger cities or in the United States. With the men gone, the tax base of these villages where reported to be devastated, unable to collect money to repair roads, and provide clean water or utilities.
“The articles are sounding a warning to Mexican officials, and to would-be migrants, making an appeal for them to stay in Mexico,” Sedillo Lopez says. “But how an article is framed may show Mexicans that the only way to make their fortune is in the United States.”
According to Sedillo Lopez, her goal is to analyze the framing of migration stories from Mexico and try to help people reframe these stories and look at them in light of underlying realities, such as the historical context, the data, lived experiences, and their underlying values.
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