Return Migrants and Potential Challenges for Future Legal Migration: Guatemalan Cases

Abstract

Mayan migration from Guatemala to the United States is a phenomenon that began in the later 1970s and early 1980s. It has been traced to the intense experience of violence, known as the “scorched earth” policy, adopted by the Guatemalan government during the 1980s as a means to defeat the guerrillas. Guatemala’s difficult conditions and the transnational social networks migrants created facilitated increased migration from the 1990s until today. The 1986 amnesty bill signed by President Ronald Reagan made 50,000 Guatemalans eligible to become permanent residents. At the same time, the 1986 law provided the first legal structures to criminalize undocumented U.S. workers and employers. In 1996, new legislation built upon this structure and detailed individual acts and convictions, e.g. as small as not wearing a seat belt, to affect whether a current or hopeful migrant could be denied an immigrant benefit in the United States. The evidence shows how public sentiment has led legislatures to expand enforcement policies that have harmed migrants, damaged American towns and cities, and created problems for migrant integration in sending countries. The presentation in this chapter builds upon the expansion of the liberal democratic paradox, giving evidence that immigration policy is damaging our commitment to enhance and promote family unification that was established by the 1965 migration legislation. Based on fieldwork in sending communities in the Guatemalan highlands, this chapter evaluates potential consequences of future immigration reform by looking at current consequences of immigration law for the Guatemalan respondents interviewed in the study.