Immigration Topic Lecture – K Side

Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially reduce its restrictions on
legal immigration to the United States.

Definition of Immigrant from USCIS:

Immigrant
An alien who has been granted the right by the USCIS to reside permanently in the United States
and to work without restrictions in the United States. Such an individual is also known known as
a Lawful Permanent Resident (LPR). All immigrants are eventually issued a "green card" (USCIS
Form I-551), which is the evidence of the alien’s LPR status. LPR’s who are awaiting the issuance
of their green cards may bear an I-551 stamp in their foreign passports.
Immigrant visas are available for aliens (and their spouses and children) who seek to immigrate
based on their job skills. An alien who has the right combination of skills, education, and/or
work experience, and is otherwise eligible, may be able to live permanently in the United States.
Per USCIS, there are five employment-based immigrant visa preferences (categories): EB-1, EB-2,
EB-3, EB-4 and EB-5. Refer to the USCIS Permanent Worker web site for more details.
 General Comments
The terms by which immigration is constructed and understood are necessarily broken,
problematic, inadequate, and demeaning. Classic examples of this are phrases like illegal alien,
migrant worker, green card spouse, and Third World refugee. These terms always construct the
individual who immigrates as an Other: An entity fundamentally and negatively different from
the American (who is almost always a cis-straight White male of middle class or higher). Issues
at stake involved in this representation of those who immigrate are notions of resource
disparity, nationalism (i.e. control of the national character), and disenfranchisement (by the
State and Capitalism).

From this logic we can understand that the phrase Legal immigration is itself an impotent
oxymoron:
There is no such thing as a ‘legal immigrant’ because the concept of immigration both
defines and refuses the law. ‘Legal immigrant’ is only a category, not an identity. In this way, any
claim to assist or disrupt the category will itself be relying on a history of sovereignty, borders,
language, and racialization that is tied to whatever State apparatus is being critiqued. The
paradoxical nature of this referential dilemma is problematic only for those individuals who
operate along lines of thought that ultimately and completely refuse the existence and
perpetuation of the State.

Refugee:
Who is a refugee? From whom do they seek refuge? Is it our fault that they need refuge
and now our double responsibility to harbor them while someone (presumably US) ‘fixes’ their
situation? What pleasure and power do we gain from giving the gift of home and safety to those
we deem dis-placed? What kind of symbolism is attached to the figure of the refugee? If the
refugee is as dangerous as xenophobes characterize them, then should radical liberals be even
more involved in increasing the presence of the refugee in the US.

When cutting evidence both on the aff and neg for this topic, it is best to understand the critical
literature surrounding the idea of legal immigration through four figures:

1. The Good Liberal Citizen

The Good Liberal Citizen is the individual who believes in and wishes to participate in so-
called enlightened and ethical behavior. This entity believes that the government is a force for
good that can be used for harm when bad actors violate the principles of democracy and
infiltrate the government. These good liberal citizens believe that protesting, policy reforms, and
voting are effective strategies for resisting those who perpetuate violent systems of power.
Oftentimes, these will be your perm card authors when you read an affirmative with a plan
and/or your state key cards on framework.

2. The Nomad
The nomad is an entity who not so much refuses society’s categories of what defines a
citizen/immigrant/etc., but rather is an entity that walks in a fundamentally different world.
That is to say, nomads determine (usually unconsciously) that the world that prototypical
citizens dwell in is actually an illusion, trap, or deceit. For example, a nomadic author will make
claims to the effect of saying that individuals in the suburbs, state policymakers, etc. actually
cannot make policy for the border/immigrant because the immigrant and the border as
understood are fundamentally different from the reality of the border--- ex. A nomadic thinker
will act like Socrates and say ‘do you know the color of the ground at a particular site along the
border?’ OR ‘When does one know that they have left their home and become an alien?’ These
authors will draw from a tradition connected to Diasporic writers, Deleuze and Guattari,
mystical thinkers like Bataille, and post-structuralists like Derrida and Baudrillard. These
arguments will usually be in the form of strange postmodern affirmatives that ask for an
endorsement of ‘imagination’ ‘unbordering’ ‘utopia’ etc.

3. The Purposefully Stateless

The character of the purposefully stateless is specifically different from that of the
nomad in that the nomad moves seemingly without any purpose and can be characterized as
more nihilistic—in that, since they believe all values to be false and constructed it is there life’s
struggle to re-evaluate and re-create values that do not condition individuals into what they
characterize as the chains of being that prevent us from being happy, realizing our potential, etc.
Instead, the purposefully stateless do not believe in the legitimacy of any governmental entity
that operates through the biopolitical (ex. The necessity to keep citizens alive i.e. the school, the
hospital etc.) and necropolitical (ex. The necessity to kill citizens i.e. the police, the law,
‘research’) aspects of power. The purposefully stateless, therefore, deliberately believe in an
end to all borders and bordering logic. Oftentimes, the purposefully stateless will lodge their
critiques of the border through a critique of capitalism, anti-blackness, misogyny, and cis-
heteronormativity. They will posit radical utopias where ideas of disciplining, punishment,
responsibility, and love are fundamentally different than they are represented in the modern
discourse. These alternatives will be lodged in the form of alternative community structures—
from those modeled on indigenous groups, African societies, etc. In their focus on alternative
possibilities for community/societies, they are uniquely distinct from the figure of the Nomad.
This is an emergent field of scholarship which means that while there may be ‘bigger’ names
such as Gloria Anzaldua and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, most of the secondary sources come
from mid-tier professors usually writing outside of the United States (which means their work
does not get cited or engaged as much as the critical intellectuals of the West). This condition is
called the Global South and it is itself a critique of the way in which particularly knowledge
production is privileged and centralized in the Universities of the West. Prominent scholars in
the West who write about such radical ideas include Hardt and Negri, Spivak, Edouard Glissant,
and Stuart Hall.

4. The Indigenous
With this idea of the Global South in mind, we must then understand that there are those
individuals who argue that the entire world is a colonized entity with layers of colonization that
are more or less apparent to those within and outside of them. The condition of the Indigenous,
then, might be best understood as both the ground by which all citizenship is established i.e. I
was born in this country and the black and brown corpses used as cement to make that ground
‘sturdy,’ ‘fertile,’ and ‘usable.’ Authors like Eve Tuck will argue that all actions connected to
resisting these forms of colonialism i.e. the border must be linked to land based reform i.e. a
more nuanced give back the land claim than that of Ward Churchill. Even more, authors writing
from and/or about the condition of the Indigenous will say that no border decisions should or
can be made because the land is stolen and/or treaties made between indigenous entities and
the government must be attended to first.

An important caveat:
Most if not all critical authors involved in discussions of immigration flout the actual legal
construction of the border in their discussion of it. Better said, because they do not believe in its
legitimacy as an juridical entity, they will often gloss over the nuances between immigrant,
slave, refugee, asylum seeker etc. because they are critiquing the general notion of movement
between and through sovereign nations (whatever that means) and the oppressive force that
the categorization as a non-citizen has upon those who travel without sanction by a
government/state entity. In this way, much of the debating on this topic will reflect a lack of
care and attention to the actual categories that reproduce ideas, research, and experience of
immigration and immigrants. I expect many cross-x’s will be dominated by discussions over who
gets to determine whether or not an individual is immigrant-enough to merit inclusion in the
topic. This will become a very sticky point of contention because of the affective charge involved
in immigration, refugee, homelessness, and asylum seeking.

With that general overview of the range of discussions involved in the critical field of
immigration, I want to go over some more specific aspects of both the affirmative and negative
positions.
 Aff
Neoliberal Policy:
-visas good for bringing good workers good for econ and heg

Soft-Left Policy:
-certain visas good for refugees, asylum seekers, etc.
-emergency (we need to get XYZ in to USA Now!)
-international treaties
-tibet, Ukraine, kashmir, Syria, honduras, Myanmar (Royhinga), philipines
-sex trafficking survivor asylum
-us territories
-ticky-tack link turns to kritiks through small changes/subsections of certain restrictions

No Plans:
-Visa/Immigration Process too Complicated
-Visa/Immigration Process Racist etc.
-No borders
-focus on indigenous people first in usa before immigrants
-focus on black people first in usa before immigrants
-endorse our experience as migrants + poetry
-radical utopia

Languages:
-Spanish, Chinese, Arabic
-languages not currently available through DHS documents/translators/interpreters
-removing language requirements

K of T:
-to the US
-Mexico
-Conspiracy
-‘immigration’
-‘legal immigration’
-‘restrictions’
-United States
 Neg
Agamben:
-Immigration constucts state of acceptability and unacceptability i.e. who is a
‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ citizen and, therefore, person. All those who are
illegitimate fall into the state of exception where they are indefinitely detained, abused,
killed, and/or refused entry.

Afro-Pessimism:
-Blacks before immigrants
-Slavery is immigration
-Only Whites can be immigrants/Americans

Anzaldua:
- The border is a site of meaning-making; this is to say, at the border identities collapse
and recover. The border teaches us that there are those who wish us harm and violence, but
also that we can be both/and. However, simply managing/recognizing the border does not allow
for this transformation; rather, it is the condition of the border’s existence that makes this
understanding possible. The elimination of the border and the violence of bordering, then, can
only occur by those who have transgressed the border and refuse its ideology. It’s a you must
leave to come home kind of thing, but in this case its you must be subject to the border to be
able to disrupt it.
-mestiza consciousness

Badiou:
-Immigration is an event that reorients the world towards new possibilities for a radical
Marxist utopia. The links are great but the alterative is nonsensical.

Bataille:
-Movement. The conditions of relation. We must understand the powers of horror in
the condition of immigration before we can come into thoughts (nonknowledge) that can end
the restrictive economies of border behavior.

Baudrillard:
-Borders are not real. Borders are a fantasy. Wanting borders is the same as wanting a
casket. The immigrant is not real. We are the immigrants. But to each other lol.

Cap K:
-Generic Neolib bad
-Hardt and Negri
-Bifo

Counter Factuals:
-chinese exclusion act
-asian exclusion act/national origins act 1924
-immigration and nationality acts of 1952 and 1965
-eugenics
Feminism:
-The bordering of bodies (gendering) is emphasized in the preservation of cartographic
lines. Ideas of entry, departure are linked to hetero-patriarchal ideologies.
-menstruation in detention
-abortion in detention
-rights of children

Foucault:
-The border is the site by which we surrender power to the state so that we can become
its healthy organisms. We consent to becoming the citizen because we do not understand how
accepting the state as our home gives it near infinite power and control over our lives.

Deleuze and Guattari:

-nomadism good, citizenship bad

Derrida and Levinas:

Hospitality bad and impossible

Gift K:
-citizenship as a gift to the oppressed is not real freedom; refuse to be homogenized
instead

Give Back the Land:

-give it back before you say who can come here—you are an immigrant too

Munoz/Edelman:
-Latina/o and Chicana/o queering of the border

Figure of the Immigrant K:

-Pivot away from focus on Latino/a

Irony:
Build the Wall
Men in Black
Mole People/Hollow Earth

Literacy Bad K:
-Immigration Restriction League

Orientalism/Said:
-model minority myth returns with a vengence

Pan/China Reps K:
-targeting Asian immigration is bad

Poetry:
-we must engage the border from a poetic lens in order to understand ourselves
-poetry in other languages
 -terminal impacts are usually colonialism etc.

Post-Colonialism
-border logic killed indigenous folks

Psychoanalysis:
-immigration is a fantasy for a neighbor that we can kill
-freud

Schmitt/Laclau and Mouffe:

-there are real enemies and those enemies are those who refuse to have enemies
-borders are real

Space/Dreaming/Utopia:
-get rid of the border – one love - cosmopolitanism

Word K’s (Representations):

Hispanic
Latina/o
Chincana/o
‘immigrant’/‘illegal immigration’/‘illegal alien’
coyote
refugee
asylum-seeker
deportation
traveler
religious minority
emigrant
legitimate/acceptable/approved/inadmissible – application k links
migrant worker/laborer
resettlement
adoption/orphan
“fathering”
nonimmigrant
parolee
immediate relative
Third World/developing nation
anything to do with a map i.e. violent colonial cartography
African nations – ‘original’ and/or decolonized names – ex Swaziland is now eSwatini
China – Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong, etc.