No One Is Illegal (Updated Edition)

Countering the chorus of anti-immigrant voices that have grown increasingly loud in the current political moment, No One is Illegal exposes the racism of anti-immigration vigilantes and puts a human face on the immigrants who risk their lives to cross the border to work in the United States.

This second edition has a new introduction to frame the analysis of the struggle for immigrant rights and the roots of the backlash.

Justin Akers Chac n is the author of the forthcoming Radicals in the Barrio: Magonistas, Socialists, Wobblies, and Communists in the Mexican American Working Class.

Mike Davis is the author many books, including The Ecology of Fear and Planet of Slums.

p class="p1">Contents



Preface to the 2018 Edition: Trump and the Failure

of Neoliberal Immigration Reform vii

Preface xix

Part I: "What Is a Vigilante Man?" White Violence in Calfornia History



Mike Davis

Introduction 3



1. Pinkertons, Klansmen, and Vigilantes 7

2. White Savages 13

3. Yellow Peril 19

4. "Swat a Jap" 25

5. The Anti-Filipino Riots 31

6. The IWW versus the KKK 35

7. I n Dubious Battle 45

8. Thank the Vigilantes 51

9. The Zoot Suit Wars 63

10. Beating the UFW 69

11. The Last Vigilantes 75

Part II: Mexico: Caught in the Web of U.S. Empire



Justin Akers Chac n

Introduction 81



12. Conquest Sets the Stage 91

13. Neoliberalism Consumes the "Mexican Miracle" 101

14. From the Maquiladoras to NAFTA: Profiting from Borders 107

Part III: Mexican Workers: The "Other" American Working Class



15. Mexican Workers to the Rescue 117

16. Segregated Workers: Class Struggle in the Fields 123

17. The Bracero Program: A Twentieth-Century Caste System 131

18. Poverty in the Fields: Legacy of the Bracero Program 141

19. Immigrant Workers Continue to Build America 147



Part IV: The War on Immigrants



20. Immigration Policy as a Means to Control Labor 165

21. The Race and Class Construction

of Immigration Restrictions 173

22. Constructing the "Illegal" Mexican Worker: Racism and Mexican Labor 183

23. Immigration Double Standards 189

24. Militarizing the Border: Death Warrant for Migrant Workers 193

25. Inventing an Invisible Enemy:

September 11 and the War on Immigrants 207

26. The Bipartisan Segregationists of Labor 219

27. The Right Wing Calls the Shots 229

28. Terrorists on the Border: The Minutemen Stalk Their Prey 241



Part V: Queremos un Mundo Sin Fronteras



29. Human Rights Activists Confront the Far Right 253

30. Unions and Immigrant Workers 259

31. Making Borders History 269

32. A New Civil Rights Movement 279

33. Mass Mobilization Defeats Sensenbrenner-King

(HR 4437) 287

34. State Repression of Immigrant Workers 293

35. The Immigrant Rights Movement at the Polls 305

36. The Arizona Laboratory and SB 1070 319

37. S . 744: The Degeneration

of "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" 329

38. Immigrant Rights at a Crossroads 341



Notes 359

Index 404