The Symbolism and Bigotry of a Supposedly Satirical Cartoon About ‘Dreamers’

The image echoes a centuries-long undercurrent in US immigration policy, beginning with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. As Mae Ngai argues in her book Impossible Subjects, US laws have often helped businesses recruit foreign workers, only to target immigrants during crises of national identity, expressed as racial anxiety. Similarly, Kency Cornejo, an art historian and theorist at the University of New Mexico, has written that the criminalization of Central American migrants depends of comparisons between “illegal” immigration and transnational gang violence — which downplays the history of US imperial policies in Latin America.