Origins of the New Latino Underclass

Over the past four decades, the Latino population of the United States was transformed from a small, ethnically segmented
population of Mexicans in the southwest, Puerto Ricans in New York, and Cubans in Miami into a large national population dominated
by Mexicans, Central Americans, and South Americans. This transformation occurred through mass immigration, much of it undocumented,
to the point where large fractions of non-Caribbean Hispanics lack legal protections and rights in the United States. Rising
illegality is critical to understanding the disadvantaged status of Latinos today. The unauthorized population began to grow
after avenues for legal entry were curtailed in 1965. The consequent rise in undocumented migration enabled political and
bureaucratic entrepreneurs to frame Latino migration as a grave threat to the nation, leading to a rising frequency of negative
framings in the media, a growing conservative reaction, and increasingly restrictive immigration and border policies that
generated more apprehensions. Rising apprehensions, in turn, further enflamed the conservative reaction to produce even harsher
enforcement and more still more apprehensions, yielding a self-feeding cycle in which apprehensions kept rising even though
undocumented inflows had stabilized. The consequent militarization of the border had the perverse effect of reducing rates
of out-migration rather than inhibiting in-migration, leading to a sharp rise in net undocumented population and rapid growth
of the undocumented population. As a result, a majority of Mexican, Central American, and South American immigrants are presently
undocumented at a time when unauthorized migrants are subject to increasing sanctions from authorities and the public, yielding
downward pressure on the status and well-being of Latinos in the United States.